Lisa visits, "Shortbus"

So Friday morning, Lisa Schmidt came to town to visit me. We did a lot of fun stuff: shopping in Soho, shopping at 34th Street, eating at Cafetasia, grabbing dessert at Yaffa with Austin. It was nice having a visitor for a change. We spent a good amount of time hunting for the perfect pair of shoes for Lisa as well, which was quite an adventure.

Tonight, I saw the new John Cameron Mitchell movie, Shortbus. As a huge fan of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, I'd been anticipating the film, and it'd been hyped up entirely too much because of the fact that it features a lot of sex and none of it was simulated for the cameras. Besides for being sexy and provocative, it was also a very interesting movie about relationships. It's hard to explain why, but there was something about the movie that made sex seem so much less stigmatized than it's become in today's world -- especially when compared with violence in movies. It was nice. Plus, the acting was quite good and there were quite a few standout moments.

The plot focuses around a gay couple, a couples therapist, and a dominatrix and their various loves, lives, and sexualities. I read a lot of reviews that seemed to think the characters were totally unsympathetic, but I really thought there was a good deal of character development. To begin with, capturing sex is capturing one of the most intimate facets of human behavior.

Another fun part of the movie was a really fun framing device for shifts in setting within the movie where a miniature animated version of Manhattan was created. It was really neat. Overall a worthwhile movie.