I wasn’t crazy about The Tudors when I first gave it a shot, but I decided to try it again over the weekend. Fortunately, I got to the episodes involving the romance between Charles Brandon and Mary Tudor. It helps that the actors involved are terrific. Gabrielle Anwar took a while to grow on me on Burn Notice—I find her somewhat alarmingly thin—but I think she’s wonderful, tough... 

I like Natalie Portman just fine, but it strikes me as somewhat characteristic that she’d mistake writing and starring in movies about ladies who like to have sex as somehow raunchy and edgy. As much as she’s done interesting work in movies like Closer and now The Black Swan, she’s always seemed to have a somewhat bland, commercial streak. Sure, her lines in the Star Wars prequels... 

I’ve written before about how fascinated I am by Lady Gaga’s efforts to uglify sex and to glorify loneliness: I think the bowl cuts, dun underwear and contortions of “Alejandro” didn’t get the credit they deserved. The video wasn’t necessarily an anti-Catholic shock display of sexuality but an embrace of isolation. But I’ve also been thinking a lot about the... 

Now this is how you make a very sexy video utilizing super-funky clothes: Robyn ‘Indestructible’ Official VideoRobyn | Myspace Music Videos I wrote a little bit back about the challenges of writing sex scenes if only because all sexual experiences are different, and so writing one effectively doesn’t mean you’ve figured out how to write another. The same’s true for... 

Dear Johnny Depp, I love you, but you are no William Powell. And here are two scenes that should tell you why. First, multiple Depps in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End: Depp tends towards twitchy, strange, he’s a sublimely odd sex symbol if people are basing their fantasies on his roles rather than simply the image of him. By contrast, when William Powell runs into himself on... 

It’s true that sex scenes are hard to write. But I think the explanation for that is simpler than a literary mystery: sex is hard to write about because sex is generally something that human beings don’t understand terribly well. And capturing the irrationality of the truly erotic is only one of the writing challenges involved. Sex can be painful, vengeful, confused, comforting, sorrowing:... 

I did warn you guys today was going to be girly. But as the last party of my nostalgic self-indulgence this weekend, I watched The Babysitters Club movie for the first time since it came out in theaters fifteen years ago. It’s got this weird flash of temporary nineties starletism: Larisa Oleynik and Rachel Leigh Cook are two of the main characters, on the cusp of their brief breakouts as sex... 

Reading this profile of Katy Perry, I had a moment of regret that her faith doesn’t actually play a more prominent role in her public presentation and music. One of the things I find vexing about coverage of evangelical Christianity is that it consistently expresses shock that individual observant Christians can also be thoughtful and witty about sex and sexual presentation in ways that don’t... 

First, thanks so much to Katie, BabylonSista, Kay and Dylan for keeping house while I was gone. I was mostly, seriously off the grid while I was in Alaska, but when I checked in, it was clear they were kicking ass in my absence. It’s such a treat to read them, much less to read them here. So, I am not the biggest fan of Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream,” mostly because I think... 

Because to discuss any part of A Song of Fire and Ice in any detail is to spoil everything, because in this world, everything is important, analysis is below the jump. Today’s subject? Women who ride like men. One of my favorite parts of A Song of Fire and Ice is the rise of women to power in all sorts of ways. Whether it’s Daenerys Targaryen finding a love she didn’t expect in marriage,...