I saw the new Coen brothers movie Burn After Reading and loved it. It's funny, satirical (both), wonderfully nasty, and a bit bloody. Anyone else see it yet? Great cast with George Clooney, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, and Brad Pitt about bed-hopping, spying (although the spying is not to be taken very seriously despite the fact someone commits treason), the lure of body enhancement, and much stupidity. It's a misanthropic joy to behold.

Then I moved to an earlier century (the 18th) where it was pretty constricting to be a woman-- The Duchess with Keira Knightly and Ralph Fiennes in a very sympathetic portrait of Georgiana, the eponymous Duchess, who is married off at 16 or 17 to a Duke at least 25 years her senior who wants a male heir and nothing else to do with her.

The Duchess becomes a celebrity: beautiful, clever--she designs her own scrumptious dresses and hats, political, (while remaining personally, pretty miserable) and upon whose marriage Sheridan's School for Scandal was based.

Prince Di was a descendant of her family, the Spencers.
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