Saturday, July 07, 2007

Sex & The City's Seventh Season

As you have undoubtedly heard the Sex & The City movie is finally a go. It'll be shooting this fall with the original cast before the cameras and the original creator behind it. This is probably not a good idea though not for the reasons I've been reading online...


I'm not going to link to any of the articles which seem overly concerned with the age of the ladies involved. Cynthia Nixon ("Miranda Hobbes") who has come out of the closet and settled into Broadway work quite nicely since the show's heyday is 41, fashion icon and all around magnificent diva Sarah Jessica Parker ("Carrie Bradshaw") is 42 as is Kristin Davis ("Charlotte York"), and winky Kim Catrall ("Samantha Jones"), the oldest, is 51. I never got the memo that women are too old to be interesting, funny, or sexy when they're in this age bracket...

Correction:
I did get that memo but I shredded it immediately. F***ing patriarchal ageist sexism is what it is. Why do so many people accept this notion point blank --even women -- when the evidence to the contrary is all around them? Julianne Moore, Michelle Pfeiffer, Kim Basinger, Sela Ward, Madonna, Daryl Hannah, Diane Lane, Catherine Keener, Holly Hunter. All way too old to be worth watching I guess. [/sarcasm]

But I still don't think this movie is a good idea for two reasons.
  1. Sex & The City was created for and well suited to the half hour format. TV shows are not movies...much as Hollywood wishes otherwise. Why not just make a short seventh season revival for HBO instead?
  2. They wrapped up all the storylines in the final two-parter "An American Girl in Paris" three years ago. If the show made one major uncharacteristic error in its blissful witty six year run it was in these two episodes: Why did a series that had found so much of ineterest in the messiness of imperfect relationships feel the need to tie neat bows around every single romance that was in play?
Though I'm sure these women will have little trouble recapturing that fizzy chemistry I still worry and fail to see the point. They wisely left the HBO party while they were still the life of it. Better to leave a party buzzing than suffer a hangover in the morning.

Thoughts?

17 comments:

Cengiz said...

Completely agree Nate. Instead of filming for month or two, why not spend that time making a 8 episode deal and mess that pretty bow with imperfection. But alas...what can you do.

Glenn Dunks said...

Oh, I don't think it's a good idea either. If for no other reason than the finale did wrap everything up. Carrie and Big can't seperate again. Charlotte can't get another divorce. Miranda and Skip can't split up again. And, well, Samantha can't keep having issues about her relationship with that actor who's name I've forgotten.

...that's all.

Anonymous said...

Smith Jerrod. How could you forget! For shame.

Also, I believe Candance Bushnell and "Mr. Big" did end up breaking up. We'll see. Not a tremendous fan of the idea myself.

Anonymous said...

Glenn.....Steve is Miranda's hubby. Not Skip! Blasphemy...Steve is obviously the best SITC man there is (don't give me any of this Aidan nonsense....gross).

As for the movie....bad idea. Especially since they'll probably kill Samantha.

Anonymous said...

There's great storylines left to develop in a movie, so I'm looking forward to seeing this.

Glenn Dunks said...

LOL. yeah. It's been a while since I watched them. I need to rewatch them, stat.

Kurtis O said...

I'm a little torn with this topic. While I do think TV is where great TV series should remain ("The Simpsons Movie" totally irks me, and I'm not even really a fan of the show), this series is so fabulously lovable that I'll take whatever extra doses they're willing to dish out. If David Frankel is indeed directing, we've all seen how wonderfully adept he is in big screen format with "The Devil Wears Prada". As for the semi-rumored movie version of another hit HBO show of which I am an avid devotee, involving one New Jersey crime family, the very thought of it gives me vivid nightmares.

Anonymous said...

Whilst it'll be wonderful to see the characters again, strong agreement that it's a bad move all round.

However, I'd disagree that the tidy finishing off was a bad call; I thought it was exactly what the show needed (and by far the best series finale in that year of plenty).

And indeed it's BECAUSE they did such a great job finishing it off that I'm really disappointed they feel the urge to undo that great work by opening things up again. Now they've got to come up with ANOTHER great ending.

This smacks a little of the revivals of Absolutely Fabulous which, lest we forget, "finished" with an episode called The End at the end of the third series, then came back AGAIN for The Last Shout special, and then... er... came back AGAIN for 2 more series!

LET IT LIE!

OK, I feel better now.

Rob

Damselfly said...

I don't think it's as nice a "bow" as people are describing it. It ended like every other episode...there were questions.

-Big (John) was moving back to NY but there was no ring, no promises....just a declaration of "your the one"...as Hugh Grant's "Daniel Cleaver" proved in BJD sometimes that declaration doesn't work the way you think it will.
-Charlotte had gotten her baby...but had't "gotten" her baby. As many parents learn the idea of a baby is very different than the presense of a baby. I for one, was left wondering if it was everything Charlotte had hoped for since it seemed to be her driving force for a long time.
-With Steve's mom moving in Miranda had a ton of changes she needed to face...she was becoming a completely different person, I think the furthest from the rest of the girls...She's also going to be the only one potentially with a child of an age that could be dealing with the "because I said so" stage. Very important in the female lifeline.
-And Samantha had declared Smith's importance but hadn't declared her love, something she hadn't done since Richard, and while in the last scenes of the episode we see she was back to her old self things will have changed...how?

Now do I like the idea of the movie? I'm not sure. I liked that there were questions but I would like to see a movie about 40 something women who are still living their lives and sexy and strong and present much to the dismay of a culture that doesn't want these women outside of their "View" and "Oprah" environment. So...I'm interested in how it translates...and with the original creater, Darren Star behind the scenes, I don't think he'll be so wiling to screw with the direction of his plot...I could be wrong.

Anonymous said...

That's right -- each of the ladies have plenty of storyline to explore now. Miranda's mother-in-law has Alzheimer's and has moved in with them, which will surely cause some strain on her marriage and family. Samantha confessed to Smith that she loved him, but has she changed that easily? Probably not. In the first "draft" of the movie, Charlotte was supposed to go to China and deal with all of this red tape about getting her baby girl to the states. There's that possibly, or they could go the route how she's dealing with being a mother and the culture shocks of adopting a foreign baby. The focus of the film will likely be Carrie and Big though -- for all we know, the film could end with their wedding, or divorce, or they could still be dating, or Carrie could be pregnant.

There's plenty of potential with the right screenplay. They could also go the route of all of them leading their separate lives and have become estranged from one another, and the film is all about them finding their way toward one another again. Hire me as a screenwriter! LMAO.

But yeah, I think that the movie is a great idea. It doesn't have to automatically derail the series finale if it's done correctly. The same guy that directed "Prada" is directing this? That's reassuring somewhat. That's the kind of feel and niche that this film should have. The one thing I disagree with about doing this is that I think this should just be an HBO movie instead of a big screen deal. I think it'll struggle to reach $100 million, and I don't want the "flop" label to be on this for those involved. I don't want this to be like the "Strangers With Candy" movie or the "Reno 911!" one, which all should have been television ventures. But other than that, I say bring the gals back.

NATHANIEL R said...

it's not the Prada director who is helming. it's the creator of the series itself

Anonymous said...

I don't know, I think kamikaze camel has a point. The majority of things they could do they've already done before. I also think that the show is perfect for 30 minute segments, but 2 hrs would be pushing it.

That said, I'd argue that television is doing nicely in shredding that memo too.

Anonymous said...

Well, that's the tone, audience, and niche that the movie should strive for -- "Prada"'s, which shouldn't be a problem since "Prada" took many of its cues from "Sex and the City" anyway.

Glenn Dunks said...

If Charlotte spends the movie in China then the entire thing is worse off than expected. If the movie becomes like the episodes where they go to LA or Paris or wherever then that'll be silly. It needs to be set in NYC and needs to be 100 minutes or less.

Amy said...

I'm against it for a single reason. The entire series was based on single women, and it's just going to be one long ass boring film if Samantha's not screwing more than four people within the first half hour.

Catherine Cantieri, Sorted said...

"I did get that memo but I shredded it immediately. F***ing patriarchal ageist sexism is what it is."

You wanna make out?

I've only seen about a dozen episodes of SATC, and agree with the commenters who say that the stories have already ended quite nicely with the series finale. I just wanted to thank you for giving the "but they're too oooooolllld" meme the set-down it deserves.

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