Welcome to the ChickFlickGuide.com blog
The Rough Guide to Chick Flicks is out today! You can order it now from the online Rough Guides shop or click below to get it from Amazon UK.
So just what is a chick flick?. Most of us recognize one when we see one. Regarded more as a guilty pleasure than as an art form, it’s a breed of movie that’s given little attentionin comparison to other, more recognized genres. Mention chick flicks and people think of Julia Roberts and Renee Zellweger, Reese Witherspoon and Drew Barrymore. Many come over all condescending, bandying dismissive words around like "light", "formulaic", and my personal favourite – “frothy”.
The Rough Guide to Chick Flicks – and this blog, which will expand upon the book – doesn’t knock froth. In fact, it delights in it. What, after all, would a cappuccino be without froth, or a bubble bath? Movies like Pretty Woman and Beaches, Ghost and Steel Magnolias are all classic examples of the 1980s/90sboom in the genre, and they all fit the bill nicely when you're craving aweepy night in with the girls and a gallon of wine. But how much more fun to broaden the scope – to use “chick flick” as an umbrella term for the rich and varied body of movies out there that have particular appeal to women. While we adore melodramas, flock to weepies in droves, and are absolute suckersfor rom-coms, I’d argue that an action movie can also be a chick flick if told from a female point of view – and even a horror movie. (Witness the huge popularity of Aliens and Terminator 2 with female audiences, or theappeal of Agent Clarice Starling – as played by the iconic Jodie Foster –in The Silence Of The Lambs. Think about Geena Davis looking cool as Hell in blonde wig and assassin's catsuit in The Long Kiss Goodnight.) And whilethe term chick flick could hardly be more American, we should never overlook world cinema when hunting down the best in women's pictures. It was fascinating, while researching the Rough Guide, to sift through everything from neorealism to New Australian cinema, French comedies to post-Tiananmen melodramas, plucking out films that would be of particular interest to female audiences.
So, the chick flick comes in many guises – but there are,of course, many constants. Be it a fairy-tale fantasy or a terminal illness sobfest, a bouncy musical or a haughty costume drama, a chick flick willinclude, in some combination, the following: fun female bonding, thick-as-thievesfriendship, and devastating family crises; mothers and daughters raging andloving with equal passion; strong women and suffering women; sacrifice, sickness,love and loss. Lots and lots of loss. Above all, a chick flick will bring emotion – feelings – unashamedly to the fore. And when that's done well,that can be a profoundly cathartic experience. Bridges of Madison County. Brief Encounter. Imitation of Life. In The Mood For Love. Just four out ofdozens that can bring a tear to my eye at the mere mention.
The Rough Guide To Chick Flicks is a valentine to the movies that women love, and offers a glittering grab bag of recommendations, whatever your viewing mood. It's the first book ever to gather together, with the same delight, reflections on Dirty Dancing and on new Iranian cinema, flappers and feminism, the gaudy excess of Gainsborough studio’s 1940s costume dramas and the dry irony of Jane Austen. Hugh Grant sits cheek by jowl with Cary Grant; scriptwriter Frances Marion cosies up with Julia Roberts. When it heads off around the world it gives as much space to silent Chinese melodrama as to Amélie, and, in discussions of the chick flick/chick lit crossover, is as excited by thework of 1960s trash icon Jacqueline Susann as by Virginia Woolf. It’s a bookthat adores any movie in which women – clowns and femmes fatales, wicked ladies and working girls, fast-talking broads and silent icons – occupy centre stage and that thinks the ranks of remarkable women (and men) behind the scenes should take a long-overdue bow.
I hope you enjoy it.
Oh – and do come back to this blog for all sorts of chick flick content not available in the book or anywhere else. That includes reviews of the latest movies, plus details of screenings, events and news for chick flick fans. And just to start, here's a link to hear me in interview about the book in a Rough Guides podcast. Have a listen and find out which is my favourite chick flick of all the time - and the one I think is the most overrated.
So just what is a chick flick?. Most of us recognize one when we see one. Regarded more as a guilty pleasure than as an art form, it’s a breed of movie that’s given little attentionin comparison to other, more recognized genres. Mention chick flicks and people think of Julia Roberts and Renee Zellweger, Reese Witherspoon and Drew Barrymore. Many come over all condescending, bandying dismissive words around like "light", "formulaic", and my personal favourite – “frothy”.
The Rough Guide to Chick Flicks – and this blog, which will expand upon the book – doesn’t knock froth. In fact, it delights in it. What, after all, would a cappuccino be without froth, or a bubble bath? Movies like Pretty Woman and Beaches, Ghost and Steel Magnolias are all classic examples of the 1980s/90sboom in the genre, and they all fit the bill nicely when you're craving aweepy night in with the girls and a gallon of wine. But how much more fun to broaden the scope – to use “chick flick” as an umbrella term for the rich and varied body of movies out there that have particular appeal to women. While we adore melodramas, flock to weepies in droves, and are absolute suckersfor rom-coms, I’d argue that an action movie can also be a chick flick if told from a female point of view – and even a horror movie. (Witness the huge popularity of Aliens and Terminator 2 with female audiences, or theappeal of Agent Clarice Starling – as played by the iconic Jodie Foster –in The Silence Of The Lambs. Think about Geena Davis looking cool as Hell in blonde wig and assassin's catsuit in The Long Kiss Goodnight.) And whilethe term chick flick could hardly be more American, we should never overlook world cinema when hunting down the best in women's pictures. It was fascinating, while researching the Rough Guide, to sift through everything from neorealism to New Australian cinema, French comedies to post-Tiananmen melodramas, plucking out films that would be of particular interest to female audiences.
So, the chick flick comes in many guises – but there are,of course, many constants. Be it a fairy-tale fantasy or a terminal illness sobfest, a bouncy musical or a haughty costume drama, a chick flick willinclude, in some combination, the following: fun female bonding, thick-as-thievesfriendship, and devastating family crises; mothers and daughters raging andloving with equal passion; strong women and suffering women; sacrifice, sickness,love and loss. Lots and lots of loss. Above all, a chick flick will bring emotion – feelings – unashamedly to the fore. And when that's done well,that can be a profoundly cathartic experience. Bridges of Madison County. Brief Encounter. Imitation of Life. In The Mood For Love. Just four out ofdozens that can bring a tear to my eye at the mere mention.
The Rough Guide To Chick Flicks is a valentine to the movies that women love, and offers a glittering grab bag of recommendations, whatever your viewing mood. It's the first book ever to gather together, with the same delight, reflections on Dirty Dancing and on new Iranian cinema, flappers and feminism, the gaudy excess of Gainsborough studio’s 1940s costume dramas and the dry irony of Jane Austen. Hugh Grant sits cheek by jowl with Cary Grant; scriptwriter Frances Marion cosies up with Julia Roberts. When it heads off around the world it gives as much space to silent Chinese melodrama as to Amélie, and, in discussions of the chick flick/chick lit crossover, is as excited by thework of 1960s trash icon Jacqueline Susann as by Virginia Woolf. It’s a bookthat adores any movie in which women – clowns and femmes fatales, wicked ladies and working girls, fast-talking broads and silent icons – occupy centre stage and that thinks the ranks of remarkable women (and men) behind the scenes should take a long-overdue bow.
I hope you enjoy it.
Oh – and do come back to this blog for all sorts of chick flick content not available in the book or anywhere else. That includes reviews of the latest movies, plus details of screenings, events and news for chick flick fans. And just to start, here's a link to hear me in interview about the book in a Rough Guides podcast. Have a listen and find out which is my favourite chick flick of all the time - and the one I think is the most overrated.
posted by Samantha Cook | 9:47 PM
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