Cranky review of Love, Actually

I don't much care for Love, Actually and I always thought it was because, before I saw it, a fellow Rickmanista told me it was the greatest film in the whole world, so I had high expectations that weren't met. But this gets at some other reasons why I don't much care for it. (These reasons also apply to most romance plots, filmed or told in other media.)

http://m.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/12/-em-love-actually-em-is-the-least-romantic-film-of-all-time/282091/

...it offers up at least three disturbing lessons about love. First, that love is overwhelmingly a product of physical attraction and requires virtually no verbal communication or intellectual/emotional affinity of any kind. Second, that the principal barrier to consummating a relationship is mustering the nerve to say “I love you”...and that once you manage that, you’re basically on the fast track to nuptial bliss. And third, that any actual obstacle to romantic fulfillment, however surmountable, is not worth the effort it would require to overcome.

Interview with Ursula K. Le Guin in The Paris Review

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6253/the-art-of-fiction-no-221-ursula-k-le-guin

Interviewer's best line:

Le Guin received me in the parlor, but we soon moved out onto the veranda, in part to escape the fierce attentions of her cat.

Le Guin's funniest line:

My tentacles are coming out of the pigeonhole in all directions.