Every time a new Twilight film comes out, my brother and I brave the madding crowds and ridiculously overpriced tickets to see it in theaters.  The overblown romance and cheesy dialogue of the saga is singularly entertaining and best captured on the big screen, where each one of Taylor Lautner’s constantly displayed abdominal muscles can be larger than the human head.  From the melodramatic opening sequence, we’re laughing.  But we’re far from the only ones.  In fact, amidst the endless discussion of Twilight‘s serious diehard fans, the ones who wish they could date Edward or Jacob themselves, it seems that a sizeable chunk of the films’ viewership is being ignored: the amused.

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Last night, my best friend and I went to see a new documentary, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work.  An in-depth look at the past year of Rivers’s life, interspersed with footage from her decades-long career and interviews with family and friends, the film was enlightening in the way that intensive examinations of the day-to-day existence of celebrities generally are.

Being famous is often quite unpleasant; the entertainment business is incredibly damaging; celebs cry, too, and so on.  But what makes this movie particularly interesting is that it’s a familiar story told about an unfamiliar subject: an older woman.

Most people probably think that men and women are equally represented in film roles.  After all, most movies have a male lead and a female lead, and there are Best Actor and Best Actress categories in every awards show.  Plus, you know, women make up roughly half (actually slightly over half) of the world’s population, so it seems natural that they would have roughly half of the film roles.  As the Bechdel Test, an interesting/sad little thought exercise I recently discovered, shows us, this is hardly the case.

Last night, my mother and I rented Up in the Air.

I reviewed the movie for my school’s newspaper back in January, but my mom is constantly a little behind the times, and I had liked it enough to agree to watch it again.

What struck my mom the most about the film, and what I think left such an impression on me the first time, is the unconventional way in which the major romance, between George Clooney and Vera Farmiga, unfolds.  We are so accustomed to stories about love progressing in certain ways that it can be quite shocking when the plot takes a different turn. [Spoilers ahead!]

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Lee DeWyze is officially the winner of the ninth season of American Idol.  The triumph of Lee, the third scruffy, low-key, guitar strumming, regular Joe white guy in a row, over the dreadlocked and husky voiced Crystal Bowersox will no doubt cause a certain amount of consternation amongst the incredibly devoted Idol commentators and fanbase.

Many will blame tween girls and their mothers for voting with their eyes instead of their ears, and many will claim that Crystal deserved the win. But Idol is a voting show, a show about giving the people what they want. And if “the people” are young girls and middle-aged women, why shouldn’t their desires count?

Over the weekend, I saw Iron Man 2.  Apparently I was far from the only woman to do so.  With a 60%/40% male/female audience breakdown for the film’s opening weekend, Iron Man 2 has surprised Paramount studios by attracting a huge number of female viewers.

One distribution exec even commented that these were the kinds of female numbers one might expect for a movie aimed specifically at that demographic, such as Sex and the City 2.  So why did such a theoretically male-targeted film draw so many women?  Or should the real question be: why is the studio so surprised?

Christina Aguilera is staging a comeback.  Though a tremendously successful pop artist from the late 90s through the middle of the last decade, Aguilera has not released an album since 2006, and the music scene has acquired new stars in her absence. With her new disc, Bionic, coming out next month, she needs to do something big to recapture the public’s attention in a crowded market.

In her recently released video for the album’s first single, “Not Myself Tonight,” Aguilera uses a common tool of the female pop star who wants some extra press: getting sexy with another woman.

I just saw Date Night, Tina Fey and Steve Carell’s new romantic comedy/thrilling caper. It was cute, the kind of film that is perfectly enjoyable but perhaps not especially memorable. But what it does contain, in place of unforgettable laugh riots, is one of the more refreshing depictions of a married couple to show up in mainstream culture for quite some time.

In a media dominated by images of oafish, layabout husbands and angry, overcritical wives, a film that presents familiar marital issues from both sides, without relying on lame “women are always like this; men are always like that” humor is something to get excited about.

ABC currently has a sitcom called Cougar Town, about a recently divorced woman who finds herself dating younger men. TV Land had a reality competition called The Cougar, in which a group of 20-something men fought for the affections of a beautiful woman in her 40s. 30 Rock had a second season episode called “Cougars,” which followed Liz’s relationship with a man 17 years her junior. As these examples indicate, “cougar,” a slang term which has gained enormous popularity in recent years, is generally defined as an older woman who is attracted to younger, handsome men.  The concept of a woman being interested in a gorgeous man who is in his sexual prime is apparently so surprising to the culture at large that we needed a special name for it.

Lady Gaga certainly isn’t the first female pop star to get experimental with her fashion choices. Madonna had her cone-shaped bras, Cher her feathered headdresses, Cyndi her neon hairdos. Right now, we’re definitely at a high point in the history of female singers’ creative sartorial decisions, with Rihanna going military-bondage chic, Katy Perry aiming for 1950s pin-up girl, Ke$ha choosing to bathe with glitter instead of soap, and Beyoncé wearing whatever she pleases.

But even amongst this wide array of exciting fashion, Gaga stands out. Unlike her contemporaries, Gaga isn’t trying to be pretty.