Monday moan.

We watched the film "Gambit" last night. I'm not going to go into a full-on review of the film here, but it was a vaguely amusing (but ultimately pretty forgettable) hour and a half. For brevity alone it gets extra marks - it's nice to find a film these days that isn't an over-inflated 2 and a half hour chore. It was a freebie, so I wasn't too disappointed.

Anyway, the film stars Colin Firth (52), Alan Rickman (67) and Cameron Diaz (40). All well-established actors, no longer in the very first flushes of youth. Why is it, therefore, that Ms Diaz was the only one of the three whose appearance I inwardly commented on, not in a good way, but in a "what has she done to her face" sort of way?

It's no secret that Cameron Diaz had plastic surgery to correct her nose, but a furtive google later and it seems that is not the only work she is rumoured to have had done.

Now, I will acknowledge that it must be bloody hard to be in the public spotlight all the time, judged on your appearance, competing for roles against nubile 20-somethings... but it does depress me how many actresses get into their thirties and forties and start having plastic surgery. The thing is, for every star whose plastic surgery does seem to halt ageing (Demi Moore?), there do seem to be a plethora of stars who just end up looking...well...slightly odd, and I do fear Cameron may well be heading towards a Meg Ryan or Melanie Griffiths.

Now, I don't particularly have a stake in Cameron Diaz's career, but as a mother to daughters it just seems to be another of the many daily reminders of how many double-standards there still are. If Colin Firth and Alan Rickman can be both respected actors and sex symbols at their respective ages, wrinkles and all without going under the knife, why can't Cameron Diaz?






P.S. I love your comments, but sometimes disqus doesn't love mobile devices. If you've got something burning to say, you might have to view the web version of this post. Sorry, and thank you!

Baby, You Can Drive My Car

Beep beep. Beep beep. Yeah.

I don't seem to do much driving any more these days. Working from home most days means that my car stays mainly in the garage, and if it wasn't for one day a week in the office we could quite easily give up being a 2-car family. (There is of course also the fact that we recently spent a small fortune on building a double garage, so at least that is getting some use!). My husband on the other hand, has around an hour's commute each way down the motorway five days a week to contend with.

When it therefore comes to driving at the weekend, you would think that I would be happy to take over any driving, to give him a break. The truth of the matter is, however, that I am fundamentally lazy and would much rather be ferried around. Since the invention of sat nav, it's not like I even have to map read any more (which is a good thing all round, as I am sure we would be divorced by now if I did) and I can therefore quite happily sit looking out of the window humming along to the radio.

If I look at other cars on the road, I notice this is overwhelmingly the case in other cars - man driving, woman on passenger seat. My parents are the same, despite the fact that my father did not get a licence until relatively late in life (I must have been in my early teens), and therefore has a lot less driving experience than my mother.

We've all heard the statistics about women drivers being safer, so why is it still a case of:

Car = Manly pursuit

Answers on the back of an AA Road Atlas to the usual address please.

RIP My Teenage Crush

DD1 and I were "enjoying" High School Musical over the weekend. I must confess, while I thought the film was harmless enough, it wouldn't normally be something I would choose to watch again. In some ways this surprised me a little. I'm normally a sucker for anything vaguely inappropriately too young for me. I have terrible taste in TV and films.

Don't get me wrong - I love a good documentary as much as the next pseudo-intellectual, and I do consider myself a bit of a current affairs junkie (I'm sure there's another post somewhere about my strange crush on John Humphrys, but this is not it), but I do like nothing more than watching a bit of trash that doesn't tax my mind too much.

However, I was a little sad to find that the male lead in HSM, a certain Zac Efron actually did nothing for me. I mean, look at him:

From a purely objective point of view I can see why millions of pre-pubescent girls swoon at the mere mention of his name. If I was twenty years younger I would probably be doing the same. Heck, if I were even ten years younger I would maybe secretly think he was a tad dishy.

The thing is, since having children of my own I just can't see teenage boys quite in the same way any more. I know you will tell me that most of the actors who play these sort of roles are normally considerably older than the boys they portray on screen (Efron, apparently is 22 - the actors who play some of the lead roles in Glee, for example, are also well into their mid- to late-20s).

This does concern me somewhat. Traditionally it is fair to say that I have generally gone for older men. There comes a point though, where this starts to limit the "laminated list" somewhat. After all, despite seemingly getting better with age, even George Clooney will eventually start to lose his looks, and I don't think I am quite ready to look at Mick Jagger in quite that way yet...