The Drape Returns July 27

I'll drink to that.

Mad Men
Season 2
Sunday, July 27
10PM

Mad Men
Season 1 on DVD
July 1

Sex and the...really? Did that have to happen?

I've always been a big fan of Sex and the City. I own every season on DVD and have watched each disc ad nauseum. Loved the characters, loved the locations, loved the clothes, loved the bad puns, loved the bad dates, loved the producers, directors, writers and actors—be they regulars or guests. But here's the thing. Six seasons was enough. In fact, they were pushing it a little with numero seis. Around then, the girls were starting to get a little long in the tooth to be humping Manhattan.

While the last season was tied up a little too picture perfectly, it was a satisfying end to the reign of four fillies in the big city. When I heard talk of a movie shortly after the show wrapped, I thought, "Uh-oh. Please, don't. Leave well enough alone." And they did. For awhile.

I recently read a quote from Kim Cattrall where she explained why she famously resisted the movie talk four years ago. At the time, she thought people would hear about a big-screen version and ask, "Them again? Already?" Which pretty much sums up my feelings about this film present day. Minus the "already."

The fawning press hype has not helped. Towering billboards. A dedicated Entertainment Weekly issue. A lavishly produced Vogue spread with size 0 SJP worshipped as fashion icon of all friggin' time and enrobed in all manner of fantastic couture whipped concoctions. Blah, blah, blah, blah.

I guess it's just a sign that people need something fluffy and fabulous to latch onto right around now. Something to remind them of a less topsy-turvy world when it was OK to drink pink things to excess and throw down hundreds of dead presidents for a spiked heel with a skinny strap.

I don't blame the hoi polloi for that. But I also don't want to queue up to worship at the Manolo'd forty-something feet (and evidently fifty-something for Cattrall—gotta give the lady props) of Sam, Miranda, Carrie and Charlotte at the cinema. It just feels wrong.

And watching the video clip from the film (above)—the only scene I've seen except for a clip in the commercial where coloring with crayons served as an awkward euphemism for sex—I have to say: Ouch. Yuck. Ew. (And not just because I skeeve out when people talk with their mouths full of food.)

It feels forced. A painful caricature. A Carrie-cature! You know Ms. Bradshaw (or should I call her Mrs. Big?) would be proud of that one.

Girls, forgive me, but I want to remember you as you were.

Art appreciation

Quote of the week, excerpted from an e-mail my mom sent me:

"Can you look on the computer and see if you can find out if the artist D______ W_______ is dead or alive? I have several prints of his I'd like to paint in class, so I was sort of hoping he had been dead for 100 years."

Things We Lost in the Fire

A word of warning to the screenwriter of Things We Lost in the Fire: It's ill-advised to make Lifetime movies the butt of a joke in a film that should've only ever run on that cable station.

I only paid $3.99 to see this high-production value pile of cliché as an iTunes rental, so I don't have too much to complain about, but it's a wonder to me that scripts this weak get produced with such big names attached.

The theme line of the movie is "Always find the good." So let me try. OK, OK. Benecio Del Toro is always fun to watch. That hang-dog handsomeness of his gets me every time. But even he couldn't make me sit through the full run time of a wincingly hackneyed story of a veritable earth angel saving a hopeless (or is he?!) junkie. And, maybe, just maybe, he'll teach her a little something along the way? *Sniff*

Halle Berry did a OK job, too, but it's hard to believe that this is the same chick who gave that knife-to-the-skin performance in Monster's Ball. And I'm so tired of David Duchovny's anhedonic acting style. I knew his character died early in the film, so was hoping that would help make the story more palatable. But darn it if constant flashbacks didn't give him more screen time to smugly drone on and on and on.

Hey. That gives me an idea. David Drone-chovny. I like.

The feel of the wheel