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Movie Recommendations For The Single Souls

Mimi Koehler — Sat, 09 Feb 2019 05:00:36 +0000

Ah, love. L-O-V-E love. L is for life, because what is life without love?

10 points to you if you got that reference.

In all seriousness, though, Valentine’s Day looms ahead, that prestigious and holy day in February that either makes us roll our eyes in annoyance or stare deeply into someone else’s depending on our current relationship status.

But what if you just want to stay at home and watch some movies, celebrating (or trying to forget) your single status? Don’t worry, The Nerd Daily has got you covered! Down below you will find some movie recommendations based on your current stance on love! Just head on over to those categories and spend Valentine’s Day the way you want to – and maybe squeeze in a lovely movie somewhere along the way!

For Those Who Believe In True Love

So you find yourself single on Valentine’s Day, but you know the right person is just around the corner? These movies might be for you:

Love, Simon: Everyone and their mother needs to watch this movie about closeted gay teen Simon who falls in love over email (hello, You’ve Got Mail) and is succinctly blackmailed to keep that fact under wraps. This is the queer romantic comedy we need and deserve. Nick Robinson captures the trifles of first love and teenage awkwardness perfectly and will solidify your faith in love finding its way.

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before: Love always seems wonderful and perfect in movies, right? But in reality, it can be scary to open up to someone, to let them see the real you. Lara Jean Song, the protagonist of this beautiful Netflix adaptation of Jenny Han’s novel, has the same concerns. Fall in love with her journey of first love, first heartbreak, and epic love letters (and stay tuned for the sequel like the rest of us lovelorns).

Step Up: Okay, it was a hard day for all of us when Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan-Tatum announced their separation, but we’ll always have the movie on which set they fell in love with each other. Follow young Tyler, a boy from the wrong side of the tracks, as he gets into trouble and ends up helping out a beautiful dancer in achieving her dreams – and maybe, just maybe finding his own calling as a bonus.

Crazy Rich Asians: Boy loves girl. Girl loves boy. Boy’s mother meddles in the relationship because she doesn’t think girl is good enough for boy. Sounds like an easy concept, right? Now mix in an amazingly diverse cast and an unforgettable setting and you’ve got yourself the romantic comedy of the year.

Broken-hearted and Wallowing In Self-Pity

Your heart is broken and your faith in true love needs to be restored? You’ve watched all the Nicholas Sparks movies on a loop (been there, my friend) and still, you need another sign from the universe that people are meant to be together. Also, you just want to bawl your eyes out, but in a cathartic way? Say no more:

Me Before You: A young, energetic, and optimistic woman becomes the caretaker of a sullen, depressed man who has to accept his new life after a horrendous accident. I don’t know what more to tell you. You know where this is going. It’s going to end in heartbreak. And tears. Loads of them.

The Pursuit of Happyness: Okay, I can’t be objective about this. I’ve seen this movie once in my life. When I was a young gal, full of notions of romantic love and big dreams for the future. To this day I can’t bring myself to watch it again because it was too emotional and hit too close to home. So, tread lightly, and at your own risk, and with loads of tissue boxes. Yes. entire boxes. And watch Will Smith pursue his happiness…and maybe even get it. Or not. No spoilers here. Except for the crying thing. You will dissolve in tears. But cathartic ones.

Sweet Home Alabama: McDreamy before his Grey’s Anatomy days. Reese Witherspoon looking the exact glorious same as she does today. It’s the romantic comedy you dreamed of. Except they’re not the endgame. There are also some amazing opportunities to hurl your drink at the screen when Witherspoon makes the wrong choices and ample scenes to cry at. Honestly, this movie should be in every self-help break-up book ever written as the go-to solution.

You Want To Inflict Injuries On Anyone Who Is Happy On Valentine’s Day

Maybe you’ve just broken up with someone. Or found one of those pesky exes pop up in your DM’s like “sup?”. You think love is stupid or at least something that people should be sceptic about. You need fun, light movies that will reinstate your belief in love. Or at the very least, make you laugh out loud at the stupid things people are willing to do for it.

Death Becomes Her: Women fighting over the real thing – power. And immortality. Sure, Bruce Willis also plays a component. But Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep being immortal women who make men fall at their feet because of their illustrious beauty? That’s the real show stealer. And yes, this is ultimately a movie about female friendships, even if it doesn’t seem like it at the beginning. Friendships are for life. And death. And everything that comes after it.

The Proposal: Pretending to date your boss to get a promotion and falling in love with her in the process? Her being Sandra Bullock? Well, count me in. Betty White also stars in it. Betty White. Enough said. You will laugh and cry as you watch these two dummies realise that the real prize isn’t success in your career – it’s all about love. Cue the happy sighs.

Charade: Everyone loves Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but Charade might be her most underrated movie. Hepburn shines in her role as a young widow caught up in an involuntary heist to find her late husband’s fortune. Cary Grant – changing personalities like suits and blessing us with a hilarious shower scene – makes this comedy unforgettable.

When Harry Met Sally: Yes, I know everyone keeps going on about Sleepless in Seattle, but you have not lived until you’ve watched Meg Ryan fake an orgasm in a crowded restaurant. Trust me. Harry and Sally are like two magnets – try to push them together, and they bounce off each other, mostly with witty but biting remarks. These two take ages to find their way to each other and it’s incredibly fun watching them be pulled together only to fall apart.

You Don’t Understand This Fixation On A Single Day In The Year

You might love love. You might never want to speak to a human again in your entire life. Nevertheless, you don’t get why people put all these expectations on one single day when there are 365 in a year to make sure people know you love them. You just want to lie back, drink some wine, and watch a movie that will take you someplace else for two hours. Preferably something that will make you laugh. Your recommendations are:

Friends With Benefits: Back in my day, no one could shut up about this movie. Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake? Undeniable chemistry. From friends, to friends with benefits, to lovers, this is a silly, heartwarming comedy that will show you that love sometimes isn’t found in the most conventional of ways. (Disclaimer: This movie was around before Tinder. Tinder would have solved these guys’ problem within minutes. Alas, a time before Tinder gave us this masterpiece of quips and quotable lines and we are forever grateful).

Easy A: When Olive Penderghast’s fake loss of her virginity becomes the school’s hot gossip, she finds a way to turn her predicament and sudden fame into a worthwhile business opportunity. Starring the hilarious Emma Stone, this movie will have you laugh out loud as you wonder when someone will stand outside your house with a boombox held above their heads.

What Happens in Vegas: Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz accidentally get married in Vegas and win the jackpot in the casino. Now, neither of them wants to end the marriage and give up their claim on the money. Follow them as they try to trick the other one into violating the rules of their court-set marriage, and end up realising that money might not be the most important part about this relationship.

If you’re really going for the cringe-laugh vibe, I recommend watching Twilight, especially with the cast commentary. Nothing will make you happier than hearing Robert Pattinson laugh about his own lines. Or glittering abs. Or pale makeup. Honestly, it’s basically just Pattinson roasting himself for two hours straight and it is golden. Who cares about love when you can have actors roast themselves, right?

And that’s a wrap! I hope you will enjoy some of these movies! And whatever you decide to do on Valentine’s, remember to have fun. You do you. The Nerd Daily loves you, regardless.

Any other movies you would add? Tell us in the comments below!

The post Movie Recommendations For The Single Souls appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

What’s Our Fascination With The ‘Cinderella’ Story?

AB Endacott — Thu, 01 Nov 2018 05:00:56 +0000

Fairytales are a foundational part of any child’s literary development. From a functional perspective, they teach children the world is a dangerous place and should be treated with caution. From a more whimsical perspective, they nourish the imaginations of children from a young age. From a realistic perspective, they do both. But there’s one particular fairytale for which we as a society possess an enduring love: Cinderella.

The origins of Cinderella are often disputed. In Western literature, the earliest written version is Cenerentola, written by Giambattista Basile in 1634. The version which is closest to the one we know today is, Cendrillon by Charles Perroult in 1697. The Brothers Grimm also wrote a version in 1812, Aschenputtel. This version has a wishing tree instead of a fairy godmother, and it is in this version that the step sisters have their eyes pecked out by birds as retribution for their cruelty.

However, there are also claims of Cinderella-esque stories existing in Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese legends. Arguments have also been made about Cinderella-esque stories existing within One Thousand and One Nights.

Despite its various iterations, the more brutal of which see the stepsisters’ eyes pecked out by birds at the story’s end, the story is more or less the same.

In this excellent video, Kurt Vonnegut breaks down various story shapes, and succinctly outlines the trajectory of the Cinderella storyline. So we can broadly break the formula down as follows:

Step One: Girl and boy find one another and in finding one another, make each other happier. Sometimes we may see difficulty in how they get together, which makes it all the more rewarding when indeed they do first kiss.

Step Two: Something happens to drive them apart; a misunderstanding, a betrayal—perceived or otherwise, the personal hangups of one or both of the characters; basically any plot device in the shape of a wedge between our happy couple.

Step Three: Reconciliation, which is generally facilitated by a grand romantic gesture.

Modern rom-coms generally lubricate the transition between steps two and three through some kind of introspection, or realisation of a personal foible which is preventing them achieving true happiness. Arguably, the parallel is the prince’s quest throughout the land to find the woman to whom the lost slipper—glass or otherwise—belongs. Nevertheless, a significant number of rom-coms (as the most prominent example) follow this structure with reasonable consistency.

Consider: To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, Silver Linings Playbook, Trainwreck (which inverts the gender roles of much of the traditional narrative but nevertheless follows the formula quite religiously), Friends With Benefits, Pretty Woman, and Ten Things I Hate About You (which possesses an artful ‘b’ storyline in the form of Cameron and Bianca that actually defies this formula, but I feel we can thank Shakespeare for this nice twisting of the traditional narrative progression).

But while we love the up-down-up element of the narrative, it’s arguably more than simply the manner in which the storyline progresses that makes it so beloved. We can attribute this to some of the key elements within the story.

Let’s look first at the rags-to-riches aspect. This narrative contains a fantasy that it would be hard to argue isn’t daydreamed about by many. The idea that someone middle class (like most of us) can be abruptly swept up and transplanted into a world of luxury and opulence. Really, who wouldn’t want to suddenly be dropped in a glittering world where their every whim is met. When it’s not a question of ‘if’, not even ‘how’, but ‘how long’.

The runaway success of the Fifty Shades trilogy can’t be dismissed, no matter how hard many would like it to be. One could easily argue that the Cinderella element to it is what made it such a deeply enthralling read to so many: a young, relatively unremarkable woman is plucked out of her humdrum life, lavishes luxurious gifts upon her, and eventually transports her to the modern-day equivalent of a castle: the penthouse of a luxury apartment.

Similarly, Crazy Rich Asians, 2018’s big rom-com film which is based on the book by Kevin Kwan. Rachel, our run of the mill college professor who worries about her weekly budget and only owns something like three dresses, finds out that her boyfriend is actually the heir to one of the most wealthy families in the Asian region.

Upon their arrival in Singapore, she is treated to every luxury imaginable, pampered, clothed, and fed like a princess. The sheer opulence with which she finds herself surrounded makes the story engaging and fascinating—especially as many of us can literally only dream of experiencing such things.

I mean, it we wanted to get really deep (always dangerous territory), it could be argued that this functions as an analogue for the American Dream. How? Well, significant upward social mobility within a very short space of time, the idea that anyone can be a princess, can go from literally scrubbing floors to being the person who requests that those floors be scrubbed, the promise that all of us are special enough to be picked from the crowd by a prince, all we need is a little bit of a makeover. Surely one must consider that the nerd-to-hottie transformation trope finds its inspiration in Cinderella, too.

And it’s the point about being singled out by an eligible, interesting (hopefully), wealthy individual of means and status from a sea of anonymous faces that we turn to next. The element of the love story is a fascinating, and enthralling, one. Given that we as a society do, despite our protests to the contrary, really buy into the premise that love at first sight does in fact exist. It’s the idea that Prince Charming (so charming we don’t even really need to know his name) can gaze out onto a sea of women and be captivated by Cinderella. Twilight which served as inspiration for Fifty Shades provides us with this exact story: Bella sees herself as nondescript, not really blessed with any overly impressive attributes, yet Edward— handsome, rich, intriguing Edward—finds her captivating. And this is a conceit that has been adored in stories for a long, long time. Some people consider the original Cinderella story is the Ancient Greek story of Rodopis. You can read a version of the story here and a less romantic analysis of it here. While the slipper element is present too, so is the key theme of someone relatively ordinary being plucked from anonymity by a figure of high status.

And that’s not all. Even Sarah J Maas’ book Throne of Glass has elements of the Cinderella story in it. While Maas claims she found inspiration from the series in the scene in Disney’s Cinderella when she flees the ball as midnight chimes, and its accompanying score, the story itself contains several elements of the Cinderella tale. It contains magic, the translocation of a character who is found at the story’s beginning in abject poverty and misery to somewhere full of opulence and luxury, a love story featuring an actual prince (for the first book, at least)… Even though as the series progresses and it moves sharply away from this, the original book’s use of those parts of the story cannot be denied.

I suppose if I had to remove my customary cloak of cynicism, perhaps I would also suggest that what captivates us about the Cinderella story is the promise that it gets better. Cinderella begins just about as low as it can get—her mother is dead, her father is either dead or so busy trying to provide for his family that he can’t see the abuse Cinderella endures from her stepmother and stepsisters. She is forced to be a servant in her own home where she is treated less well than a servant because, well, she doesn’t actually get paid.

She is alone, she is named for the cinders that she must sweep out from the fireplaces, and she has no obvious way to get out of this situation; a young girl escaping would probably fall prey to all manner of unpleasant travellers. Yet she does manage to escape, and she is given a home, the adulation she was forced to forfeit for so long, with interest no less, as she has an entire country beneath her feet now, she’s comfortable, and she has a prince who loves her. It offers a message to people that things may seem bad now, but they will improve, and you will be compensated for your suffering. And that’s a pretty powerful message.

What’s your favourite version of a Cinderella story? Tell us in the comments below!

The post What’s Our Fascination With The ‘Cinderella’ Story? appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

Rewind: Movies We Were Watching in 2008

Elise Dumpleton — Wed, 07 Feb 2018 20:00:59 +0000

We were shocked to see the first month of 2018 fly by, but taking a trip down movie lane to ten years ago has us a little surprised!

Heading into the year of 2008, Hollywood saw the start of the Marvel Cinematic Universe begin with the release of Iron Man, along with DC dabbling in superheroes with The Dark Knight—which may have been the last decent film they brought out.

Then of course there was the paranormal phenomenon—Twilight. The film sent people crazy with the birth of “Twi-hards” and “Twi-moms” frothing over the teenage romance between a human and a vampire. This saw the next few years of movies, television and books being dominated by vampires, werewolves, witches and more.

We were also treated to more additions to franchises such as Indiana Jones, James Bond, Narnia and High School Musical.