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The Wes Anderson Collection: The Grand Budapest Hotel (author, Matt Zoller Seitz; publisher, Abrams Books)

Role: Contributor, “The Music of The Grand Budapest Hotel: A Place, Its People, and Their Story”

“It makes sense that Desplat would identify Dmitri and Jopling with the organ; they’re agents of chaos and death, but they’re also authoritarian characters, creatures of pure will. The organ is there when Dmitri confronts M. Gustave after the reading of Madame D.’s last will and testament. It opens and closes J.G.’s interrogation of M. Serge’s sister. It fills the negative space leading up to the murder of Vilmos Kovacs. It signals Dmitri’s slow stride down the hotel’s hallway when he realizes Agatha has the painting. It even comes in on the tail end Madame D.’s theme, which we hear at the hotel and again at her funeral, subtly confirming that her son and his accomplice’s were somehow involved in her death.”

World Film Locations: San Francisco (editor, Scott Jordan Harris; publisher, Intellect)

Role: Contributor, “Harold and Maude: The Sutro Baths”

“What makes this scene significant is how it cements Harold and Maude’s partnership, and their rebellion against social norms. It’s the first time Harold isn’t just along for the ride as a reluctant, albeit enthralled observer. Realizing they’re the same, he and Maude team up for a common goal. It’s afterwards that they consummate their affair. Much like the ruins are in stark contrast to their natural settings, the anarchic pair fends off Victor, a palpable personification of order.”

5 things best left in the ‘90s

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To cap off what’s been a surprisingly successful series on the ‘90s, I want to impart some wisdom that could very well save our culture. Not everything from the ‘90s is worth hanging on to. So when we plan our revival, let’s carefully curate the things we revisit and leave these duds behind.

1. The laugh track

No, it wasn’t invented in the ‘90s, but near the end of the ‘90s, good writing started to phase it out. Shows like Dream on, Ally McBeal and Sex and the City proved that people could laugh in all the right places without taking cues from a phantom audience. Sure, the ‘90s gave us Seinfeld and Frasier, but they were also responsible for Caroline in the City, Just Shoot Me and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. When you look back at some of these, it’s staggering how un-funny they are. Such punchline-driven cheap shots. Such meaningless catch phrases (or in the case of The Nanny, a series of grating groans). So will someone please send Two and a Half Men back to 1995 where it belongs? We’ve got 30 Rock and The Office now. We’ll just take it from here.

2. Dimestore spirituality

Though I’m not the biggest fan of self-help, some of it speaks on a tangible, grounded level. Unfortunately, the ‘90s wanted to balance that out with a new brand of New Age, and it was never very clear what doctrine a person was following. Oprah’s “Remembering your Spirit” segment invited guests to describe their calming rituals, like drawing a bath or, in the case of Martha Stewart, berating the help. Books like The Celestine Prophecy became hugely popular, and despite being a work of fiction, some still adhered to some of its proposed “insights.” And TV producers played fast and loose with Christian dogmas to make Touched by an Angel and Seventh Heaven more mainstream. The ensuing melting pot didn’t use the best ingredients, just the most popular.

3. Whiny pop that tried so, so hard to sound like alterno

Grunge did something to the music industry. It opened up a whole new market. But true-blue grunge artists cared a lot more about the music than their labels did. So labels started working with musicians who were willing to follow orders. That’s how we ended up with the radio-friendly, easy-listening drivel of the Goo Goo Dolls, the Gin Blossoms and that Friends band. There’s still some of that going around today. You have the Stereos, who are just enough emo to bellyache through each song, just enough rock to distort their guitars, and just enough hip-hop to sing every note on auto-tune. It’s just awful. And hopefully it’ll move back in with its mother Cher, circa “Believe.”

4. Khakis

Despite one very enticing Gap ad campaign, khakis just don’t look as good on people who aren’t professional dancers or models. They seem so promising because they’re classic, but that doesn’t translate into staying power when the trend resurfaces. So this time around, if the khaki comes back, let’s just act like we don’t know it.

5. Will Smith

He and I were cool until he became a Scientologist.

I actually liked the Fresh Prince in Six Degrees of Separation. Why didn't he go all Stockard Channing instead of Tom Cruise?

5 things we’ve kept from the ‘90s

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Oh, how we loved poking fun at the ‘80s! But when the things we hated most about them were brought back by American Apparel and possibly Marc Jacobs, old was new again. So I’m convinced that we’ll come to a similar conclusion about the ‘90s because they really weren’t so bad, and, if we want to get all sentimental about it, they helped us build the new millennium. Plus, good or bad, we actually held on to some ‘90s stuff. Here’s proof.

1. The a-ha! ending

What do The Usual Suspects, Fight Club and The Sixth Sense have in common? An unexpected, what the?, second-viewing-required ending. If anything, these movies improved the suspense genre. Alfred Hitchcock was a strong enough storyteller to tell you who the killer was right away and make you itch in discomfort until they got caught. But replicating that experience has been a challenge. And then writers realized they just had to be more clever to build a better mystery. The best example is probably Memento, but the tradition carries on with pictures like The Machinist and Shutter Island.

"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."

2. Here, queer & (getting) used to it

There’s nothing pretty about it: right up until the ’90s, gay and lesbian characters in movies or novels were often crazy, obsessed with the object of their affection, and/or just plain evil. AIDS gave people one more thing to blame on homosexuality, but when hetero women started contracting the disease, we couldn’t generalize these things any longer. That’s when we had to acknowledge the LGBT community, its budding voice and its rights. Then, on the heels of pop artist Keith Haring’s death, Madonna went into public service. She commented on religiously-backed bigotry and sexism in “Like a Prayer,” encouraged women to demand an orgasm in “Express Yourself,” celebrated/stole a gay club dance trend with “Vogue,” and hired mostly queer dancers for her Blond Ambition tour, as documented in Truth or Dare. That’s how the ‘90s started, and those sensibilities about the LGBT community remained in our consciousness. Though homophobia is still present and marring equality to the tune of Proposition 8, it didn’t quell Ellen’s eventual coming-out or the popularity of Will & Grace and The L Word. Today, we’ve replaced the term “lifestyle choice” with “orientation” (but we could still do better), and more people accept that sexuality, in all its forms, is biologically assigned. Maybe it’s because we dealt with so many LGBT issues in the ‘90s and part of the 2Ks that Lady Gaga’s butch-on-girl kiss in “Telephone” is a relative non-issue now.  Certainly compared to how people reacted to “Justify my Love” in 1991. There’s still a whole lot of progress to be made. But we’re lightyears away from 1989, thank goodness.

3. Political correctness

Having hoorayed for gays, it must be said that the ‘90s also introduced a whole slew of new terms to replace old words that were borne of racism, chauvinism and general power structures that no longer reflected our new equal & empowered reality. I’m not saying it was a bad thing, and I couldn’t because I’m a woman. I personally benefitted from these changes. Still, the double-edged sword of political correctness is that it essentially masks old views instead of replacing them. A word can alter your language about an issue, and that’s certainly important. But it takes conviction – not just vocabulary – to create a revolution. That’s why words like “tolerance” have always irked me. It means putting up with something you don’t like, when, especially in the case of discrimination, it’s the dislike that needs to change.

4. “I’ve never been to me”

This is probably one of my least favourite ‘90s hangers-on, but it’s so popular that I have to address it. From John Gray to Alanis Morissette, if there’s one thing the ‘90s taught us, it’s that people in the westernized world have the luxury of spending a lot of time on their own problems. Enter Self-Help, which has its own bookstore section, right in between “Psychology” and “Cooking.” It taught us phrases like “scarred for life” and “you can’t love others until you love yourself.” Since the ‘90s, this trend has gotten bigger and, I would argue, more dangerous. Case in point: The Secret is still riding high on Oprah’s endorsement, and it teaches little more than you will get rich just by sitting on your ass and thinking positive thoughts. Why? Because the universe owes you. Which is exactly like saying that children toiling in sweat shops could change their fate if only they thought of bunnies and flowers instead of, you know, eating.

5. The Internet

Okay, so the Internet, as a technology, has actually been around since the ‘60s, but it wasn’t used by the public until 1991, and it only became commercialized and widespread in the mid-‘90s. If Twitter’s taught us anything, it’s that the way people interact with your invention is often more important than the invention itself. Although the Internet has all but replaced the library, abbreviated your TV and usurped the Associated Press, its most considerable achievement, I believe, was to make Playboy kind of soft core.

Laugh if you will, but back in the day, this machine was the shizzle.

Coming up: things the ‘90s can bloody well keep to themselves!

Girly girl time

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Look, I studied at the school of smartypants. I know the difference between male (biological attribute) and masculine (social attribute). I read feminist theory, became acquainted with Laura Mulvey, friends with Susan Sontag, and intimate with bell hooks. I picked apart Paradise Lost, “Four Quartets” and Shakespeare’s female characters. I can speak, read and interpret French, Italian, German, and medieval English. In the last course of my last university term, I wrote my final paper on Gnostic elements in Aeon Flux (the original animated series). I have a brain, and I love to stimulate it with…stuff.

But every now and then, I just want to turn the ol’ noggin off. That’s when the outer Betty Friedan summons the inner Barbie, and I just indulge in a bunch of girly things for one blessed girly night.

It all begins with shopping. There’s no structure here, just a budget. Once I go over it by about $100, it’s time to get myself some girly reading material, namely Vogue (which I buy every month, regardless of whether or not I’ve made time for the girly show), and probably a nice, posh-looking food mag. Then it’s off to the video store to rent a couple of infallible girly movies. Sex and the City and Absolutely Fabulous used to be great companions, until I got the DVDs (I had to, you see). Next, it’s a booze run (either cans of Wurzburger beer or a fruity rosé), followed by take-out (I can’t resist Chinese broccoli soaked in oyster sauce, with a side of General Tao).

Then I get home, and the bliss begins. I crack open the alcohol, put the first movie on, spread the shopping bags all over the floor, wolf down the Chinese, and in between movies, hop in the bathtub for a richly deserved bubble bath. By movie 2, I’ve giving myself a facial and moisturizing every limb. At the end of the night, I pull out some no-strings-attached chick lit and wooze myself into a beautifully mindless slumber.

Don’t judge me! Smart girls need a little dumb time too. It’s a shame that “stupid” adds up to “girly,” but I take comfort in knowing that “dick flicks” include car chases, explosions and guns. Nothing terribly profound here.

So here are a few recommendations I’d like to make for your next girly night. And feel free to make suggestions of your own. I always welcome new additions to my little ritual.

Valley of the Dolls – This delicious novel is not unlike eating cotton candy: you’re getting bloodsugar nausea, but you won’t stop until there’s none left. The movie is full-on camp and stars the late Sharon Tate, so you’ll probably be a little curious. But I implore you to read the novel first. It’s infinitely better, with a touch more sex (full disclosure: this is what chicks really dig in a trash novel).

4 Blondes – Candace Bushnell is a surprisingly bad writer, but she somehow manages to tell a story. This book not-so-cleverly separates each chapter into a shade of blonde hair dye (e.g. platinum), and follows the girl who presumably flaunts it. Each character lives a life we couldn’t possibly imagine, and moves in New York’s finest circles. But sadly, each isn’t entirely fulfilled and pursues her heart’s content, for a fleeting New York minute. I don’t know how, but it’s engrossing.

Chantilly Lace – This bonafide chick flick features the improvisations of Ally Sheedy, Martha Plimpton, JoBeth Williams, Talia Shire, Lindsay Crouse, Jill Eikenberry and that Supergirl lady. They play 7 women vacationing in a gigantic cabin in the woods for the sole purpose of having one long, uninterrupted gabfest. Popcorn please!

All About My Mother – I’d hardly call any Pedro Almodovar film mindless, but he can entertain you without asking too much effort on your part. What I love most about this particular movie are the fabulous, wonderful women who express, so fervently, what it really feels like for a girl. From being gutted by tragedy to picking yourself up and moving forward like a train. For the same reasons, I also recommend Volver.

Like Water for Chocolate – Based on the Mexican novel by Laura Esquivel, this tasty movie tells the magical tale of Tita, a girl who’s forbidden to marry her boyfriend Pedro, and decides to show him her love through her cooking. It’s a simple escapade to turn-of-the-century Mexico with loads of exotic food scenes. Combine grub and romance and you’ve got a winning girly formula. Read the book while you’re at it. It’s available in something like 30 languages.

Moonstruck – I’ll admit, I prefer viewing this gem in the fall or winter. Maybe because it’s best accompanied by a bit of red wine, cheese and crackers, which I prefer during our nippy seasons. Anyhow, you probably won’t see a better performance by Cher or Nicholas Cage. Every character has a memorable line in this classy comedy, set against Puccini’s La Bohème. The Cher makeover scene is also yummy.

Pédale douce – This funky French flick about an unregenerate hag and her homo entourage uses humour to counterbalance a laundry list of gay issues (homophobia, living in the closet, STDs). Okay, so the latter is a bit condescending (not to mention dated), but the comedy is really, really funny. I especially love the woman who thinks her husband is gay and goes to great lengths to, first, discover his alternative lifestyle by going to raves, and second, embrace his homosexuality by throwing him a flamboyant “coming out” birthday party, where she gives him a lovely set of earrings to bring out his gorgeous green eyes. If you haven’t met her, get acquainted with Michèle Larocque, who makes her way into most of France’s funniest comedies.

J’ai faim!!! – Another hilarious French comedy. This one’s about a woman who tries to win her lover back by losing weight, because she thinks he left her for his new, super-skinny coworker. She’s egged on by her bestie (Michèle Larocque again!), who’s on a ridiculous diet that only lets you eat one food item per week, but as much of it as you want (starting with all-you-can-eat cucumber). Yes, many lessons are learned in the end. But this movie’s really about the journey and the girlfriends you take with you.

***

Parting note: apologies to any male readers.