more sick

Last Satyrday uilos was feeling rather tired and spacey, so we left gaming early. By Sunday night this had progressed to more coughing than I've seen in one person in quite awhile. Naturally I picked up a low-grade version of whatever it was and spent Monday and Tuesday sounding like I had Leonard Cohen stuck in my throat. I think we're both over the worst of it now. Although I took a preventative decongestant this morning and now seem to be making more snot, so who knows.

I'm pretty sure it's not related to the flu shot this year, at least.

Last night we had dinner at La Sandia, a Mexican place in Tysons next to Barnes and Noble that's rather shockingly good for a mall restaurant. Not too expensive, not very loud, good selection and good food. I'm happy it exists and is near me. After dinner we went and saw Whip It, which is far better than any sports movie has any right to be. Then there was falling over, because being over the worst of it isn't actually being fully recovered. Oof.

Whip It

Drew Barrymore (dir.), Whip It

There's a video game called Darkened Skye that's based on, of all things, Skittles. Somehow the developers managed to make it better than a video game based on candy has any right to be, through a combination of acceptable platform/action gameplay, witty self-aware banter, and a kick-ass heroine.

Whip It's kind of like that for sports movies. The plot: Bliss's mother wants her to do beauty pageants. Bliss discovers roller derby and joins a losing team, propelling them to the championship by her sheer awesomeness. Hijinks and teenage angst ensue. There's a boy from the big city, a fight with her best friend, the obligatory tension with her mother, and the possibility of missing the big championship match. And despite all that, it's so much better than any movie based on a sport (even roller derby) ought to be.

It has Ellen Page ("Juno") being awesome, and Drew Barrymore being kinda spacey, and a couple of deaf characters that aren't played for laughs but are just there. The fairly pedestrian plot has a bunch of interesting bits around the edges: a love story with a non-stupid resolution that doesn't take over the movie, parents that act like real parents, teenaged drinking and sex shown in a non-judgemental way. and some good characters. And it's just plain fun to watch.

Also, I think it's the first movie I've seen that fails the reverse Bechdel test, which makes me happy. There's some very brief interaction between Bliss's dad and the dad next door, but that's about Bliss. The coaches from two of the teams have a brief conversation during a match, but since the teams are all-female, this is arguably two guys talking about women. (Also, I don't remember if the other team's coach had a name or not.) And other than that, there aren't scenes of two guys talking to each other.

The sheer small-town-Southern atmosphere overwhelmed me for awhile. The movie does a very good job of evoking the desperation and dead-end-ness of life in such a place, to the extent that I spent the first fifteen or twenty minutes squirming in my chair. It got better once Bliss got to Austin for the first time, but still. . . yeesh.

(The internets inform me that the screenwriter based the screenplay on her novel Derby Girl, which one reader summed up as "Too much boyfriend. Not enough roller derby." I am happy to report that she adjusted the proportions in the film version.)