Valentine's Week! Day One ... of one?

Let's discuss novelty desk calendars.  See, I think they have the perfect racket going, because most people don't retain all sorts of information for very long.  That means they could, presumably, reissue the exact same calendar every year with the dates and days corrected and just have the same Dilbert strips looping forever.  In f-

Wait a minute.

According to mine, it says today's Valentine's Day.

OH MAN, I TOTALLY FORGOT VALENTINE'S WEEK!

Man, now I have to cram five days worth of Valentine's related topics into one post!  Okay, okay, I can do this.  Here we go!




First up, um... er... a movie!  That's it!

Okay, I've already one Warm Bodies, The Invention Of Lying, and others, so I think I'm going to have to go back and dredge up one of my all-time favorite romantic movies.

Anybody who recalls my discussing my time working in movie theaters might recall my mentioning that I have a lifelong crush on Julia Stiles.  I thought she was great in 10 Things I Hate About You, but my all-time favorite movie with her in it is Save The Last Dance.  It's truly an underrated classic.

You have a standard cliche opening.  Julia Stiles plays a high school girl who was a promising ballet dancer.  She botches a dance audition to attend Julliard, while at the same time her mother is killed in a car accident trying to make it to the audition.  Sara (Julia Stiles' character) moves in with her father and starts attending a gritty, urban school where she quickly learns how easy it is to get your backpack stolen and has to adapt.

However, it's not a cliche movie.  The movie is intelligent, and doesn't just let stereotypes do all of the heavy lifting.  Is the (primarily) black school scandalized at the idea of a white girl from the suburbs attending?  No, they have other things to deal with.  When Sara meets a young man who introduces her to hip-hop dancing, does it just become an excuse to have them rub up against each other?  No, they're actually interested in the dances, and the relationship that blooms from that is based on something more than "hey, our eyes just met and we both have rhythm."

Characters discuss relationships with intelligence, with lines like "We spend more time defending our relationship than actually having one," and "It's about me and him, not about us and other people."  They're aware of their own surroundings, and are able to recognize the behaviors in others.  When a girl gets in Sara's face about dating Derek, the young man in her life, someone explains, "You come and take one of the few decent men left after drugs, jail, and drive-bys."  It's a movie that discusses how race affects relationships, but doesn't have all of its relationships be defined by race.

Does it follow some of the cliche formulas?  Well, sure, it's an MTV Films production, you need things like the mentor-student relationship growing, the mid-movie fight between the couple, so on, so on, but the characters seem aware of these events happening, and don't simply follow them because they're supposed to, but because that's how things are actually shaping up to work.

It's one of my guilty pleasures, but you never see it on television.  Even though it has some pretty big names in it (Kerry Washington's in it, for example).

Okay, that's one section down.  Now for the second...um, um, um...

Video games!  Okay, let's see, something romantic from video games, what do I have...

Wait, what?  No!  What?  NO!

Just, just no, okay?  No.

Let's try something (anything) else.

Ah, there we go.  Professor Hershel Layton and Claire.  One of the more heart-wrenching moments in a video game is the closing video for Professor Layton and the Unwound Future, a game with a plot that involves time travel, and we all know how much I love time travel (spoiler: I don't).

Spoilers ahead:

Claire is the assistant to several scientists working on a method of transporting people through time.  There's an accident when the machine is tested, and Claire winds up losing her life in the ensuing explosion.  However, ten years later Professor Layton (her boyfriend back then) thinks he spots her in a crowd as part of a larger plot, and it only gets stranger, heartwarming-er, and sadder from there.

It fully builds into the origin of the ultimate puzzle thinker and gentlemen, and why he holds himself up to such a high standard in everything he does.  It's a great relationship, even if it does wind up doomed.

Okay, movie is done, video game is done, comic book... comic book... comic book...

Okay, I'll come back to that.

TELEVISION SHOW!

Right!

If I had to pick my favorite couple on television in the past few years, I'd be hard pressed to settle on one.  On the one hand, I'm a huge fan of the TV show Castle, and think that the two leads of the show have a great chemistry and must have so much fun doing what they do.  However, if I wanted to pick the couple that I think could ride out anything that happened to them... I'd go with these two.

Seriously, if you told me back in the early 2000s that Tiffany Amber-Theissen was going to be a major character in one of my favorite shows on television, I would've laughed at you and asked, "What, is she the new principal in a relaunch of Saved By The Bell?"

Playing Elizabeth Burke to Tim DeKay's Peter Burke, the couple has one of the most rock solid relationships I think I've seen on television in a long time.  It isn't perfect, but they quickly set the rules as to what they will and won't tolerate.  Elizabeth worries about Peter when he's on a case.  Peter's always ready to drop anything when he fears Elizabeth might be in trouble.  The two of them are always ready to support each other in anything the other one wants (or needs) to do, and the introduction of Neil Caffrey into their lives does shake things up a bit, but they quickly settle again and become more solid after every test the show sends their way.

Three down.  ...I never did a Valentine Ask Erik this week.  Well, maybe next week.  So that's four.

And the fifth? ...well, when in doubt, go with Batman.

If there's a more honest portrayal of love in the universe than Batman telling you he's in love, I can't think of it.  Then again, it's been a crazy week and I haven't been thinking completely straight.

Blatantly stolen from Mike Anderson's great website, I present some 1966 Batman valentines.

Are you going to argue with Batman?  He has computers and science on his side.

...okay, that's kinda creepy.

You can trust Batman.  He's a scientist.  He's done the tests.

That right there in that little bottle is ground up little cartoon hearts mixed with particular plant extracts, guava paste, turmeric (that's why it's yellow), and cash.  Because he's rich and can afford to toss some benjamins into a coffee grinder.

...is Batman trying to turn a dragon creature into his valentine?  He's clearly stabbing it with one of Cupid's arrows.

"There's nothing I wouldn't do for you, Valentine.  Even if it means changing your mind FOR YOU."

You see, it's sweet because his wife is permanently trapped in ice or she'll die, and he needs to be in sub-zero temperatures or he'll die, and he's constantly trying to rob places to get the money he needs to do the research to save her life!

Yes, let's not act like Mr. Freeze and be willing to devote our lives to helping the one we love at any cost to our own lives if it means being able to save theirs.  I mean, what woman would want that when they can instead be chased by the bat-copter and forced into a relationship with the strategy and tactics of the Boston police looking for a marathon bomber?