A motion to create an OUSU mascot, a “big bouncing blue blob of bureaucracy” called ‘Ousy’, unexpectedly passed at OUSU Council last Friday, despite repeated objections from representatives.

£300 of OUSU’s publicity budget is to be spent on creating a suit after the proposal from Oxide Radio DJs Max Seddon and James MacAdam was amended to force Seddon to be inside the suit as a part-time executive officer.
Seddon, a first year Magdalen student, described Ousy in his satirical manifesto as “a big bouncing blue blob of bureaucracy who lives in a beautiful 1970s style building surrounded by happy homeless people. He’s a loving fellow and is sure that OUSU Council fully reflects the opinion of the majority of students. His favourite things are student union services, hugging and anal sex.”

Wadham SU President Ben Jasper warned that students will not necessarily accept the decision as light-hearted. “Half of our central student union’s publicity budget will be dedicated to putting a pompous Etonian twit in a big blue suit for a few days in Michaelmas,” he said.

“It’s not going to help let students who face being thrown out of their college contact the Student Advice Team. It will prevent OUSU from advertising the most important welfare services it offers. Other JCR Presidents should be hanging their heads in shame. It occurred in a hysteria of ‘I don’t care, my replacement’s been elected’ and they acted with utter stupidity.”

Jamie Frew, OUSU Vice-President for Welfare, said that the mascot was intended to perpetuate the Student Union’s negative public image. “There are people both inside OUSU and beyond who have been very offended by what has happened. I had expected the motion to be quickly dismissed: I was really surprised to discover that people were prepared to vote for the sanitised version he presented.”

Another OUSU sabbatical officer, Andrea Miller, agreed with Frew that the mascot would not be beneficial for the Student Union. “I am very upset that OUSU Council would pass a motion that endorsed the statement that ‘students would be more prepared to listen to someone in a fuzzy blue suit talk about and provide student services than members of the OUSU executive.’

President Alan Strickland refused to side with his fellow sabbatical officers, suggesting that the mascot would be welcome in the future. “I’m touched that Max is thinking of us. I think a mascot would be a fun publicity tool for events like elections and clubs nights where we want to grab students attention and get them involved.

“Personally I think of OUSU as more of a lion than a dinosaur: fast, powerful, and ruthlessly effective. Max’s idea to use animals to get our message across is inspired. Communication is a mammoth issue which has sometimes been a bit of a dog’s dinner for OUSU because of our mouse-like funding.”
Becky Ely

A MERTON student was hospitalised after being attacked by a Blues sportsman at last week’s Summer Eights regatta.

Ben Holroyd, a fourth year medical student at Merton, was treated for concussion at the John Radcliffe Hospital on Saturday after he was head butted in the face and punched in the jaw at Merton boat house. The attacker alleged that Holroyd had been threatening towards his girlfriend.

Holroyd said that he had not provoked the attack and that the accusations made against him were untrue. “He told me we needed to talk and then dragged me towards the darkened corridor next to the changing rooms. He told me that I had been threatening a girl who he had recently started dating” he said.

“He assured me that if I didn’t 'shut up', he would 'knock me out and throw me into the river'. The next thing I knew, he had head butted me square in the forehead.  He threw a right hook at my jaw and I lost consciousness,” Holroyd added.

First aid officers were immediately called and accompanied Holroyd in a speedboat to the Head of the River pub, where he boarded an ambulance and was taken to the John Radcliffe Hospital for treatment. The following day the incident was reported to the police, and Holroyd is currently considering the possibility of taking legal action against the attacker. “The whole thing was completely unprovoked and mad, so I’d like something done about it. I may well press charges,” he said.

Merton barman David Hedges witnessed the attack, saying he asked the aggressor to leave the College's premises following the incident. “As bar manager, I chucked him out of the boat house and he went quite quietly.”

Richard Stock, Oxford University Rowing Club’s Sabbatical Officer and one of Eights Week's  main organisers, condemned the assault and said that incidents of violence were not typical of the regatta. “Obviously we don’t want this kind of thing to happen, but it was a pretty isolated event.”

Holroyd’s attacker was unavailable for comment.

Who are the heroes of Oxford film? Surely Jeremy Irons’ trademark narcissism in Brideshead Revisited must come to mind; perhaps John Thaw’s snobbish coolness as Chief Inspector Morse; without doubt, the speech by Michael Soares in True Blue – may it endure as the greatest (the only?) rhetorical display by a Catholic priest out to subvert the authority of a rowing club council. Above all, those “dreaming spires” that the film industry so loves have probably brought more attention to this town than any individual. Filming in Oxford, you say, has been done. Often it has been good – and at times brilliant – but, nevertheless, it represents an inevitable entry into the tedious realm of stereotype. However, despite this popular perception of film-making in Oxford, there are a number of students who aim to break the bonds of trite cinematic mediocrity.
The largest student film society in Oxford is the Oxford University Film Foundation (OUFF), which has been in existence for a quarter of a century and claims on its website to “aim to support all aspects of film appreciation and creation right across the university.” The society’s film cuppers, held in Hilary term of each year, represents the major event of the film-making calendar: six shortlisted films were shown before a panel of judges in the Pheonix Picture House this May, and the winner was given a distribution deal.
Entries in the past couple of years have represented a variety of approaches: the comic-pretensiousness of Terracotta, a film which explores the seven deadly sins through the medium of a ceramic plant pot; Ophelia’s origami animals in stop-frame; the downright demented This is an Art Attack, a spoof of the children’s television programme in which presenter Neil Buchanan was portrayed sniffing glue and attempting to recreate God’s image.
The winner two years ago was the inspired 1920s style surrealist work “Cauchemar de l’homme en Noir et Blanc.” Since then, co-director Matt Green has gone on to produce another surrealist work, The Tragedy of Albert, to be screened in London cinemas, with (all hail product placement) two thousand pounds of funding from that great arts-supporting capitalist enterprise: KFC.

This year’s competition was won by I Just Keep Thinking of Humphrey Bogart, a ten-minute film written and directed by Alec Garton-Ash. The film is a strange probe into the world of artistic imagination in which a young man gradually realizes that his life has become a film noir fantasy, and the plot climaxes with the manic onrush of a horde of Bogartesque figures. The colour is effectively replaced with black-and-white halfway through, paradoxically moving still images are successfully interspersed, and the main character’s battle with his shadow is convincing.
Garton-Ash says the idea of producing a film about Oxford did not appeal to him as much of the material produced by students, on stage or on camera, tends to be unimaginative and/or conservative. This is not for lack of resources; he borrowed equipment from St. Peter’s College Film Society, and put Facebook to good use in spreading the word that he required a large group of Humprhey Bogart impersonators.

Above all, Garton Ash stresses how easy it is to produce a film: you can just take a digital camera, get some friends together, and you’ve got one. This might not produce a masterpiece, but it does not require a massive amount of effort (or, necessarily, participants) to produce valuable work. Putting on a play requires a lot of know-how, preparation, and people; as a result, the number of those willing to put on a play who also know what they are doing is limited, and it is inevitable that a thespian clique emerges. But making a film, with university film societies providing support, is something that is fundamentally straightforward and democratic. Christchurch filmster Craig Webster also made an entry for film cuppers this year. Casting friends and, again, borrowing equipment, he shot it in a single weekend.

Indeed, there are some students who have exploited the democratization of media to bypass film societies and produce their own work entirely independently. Leading the avant-garde of Oxford documentaires is Alex Scrivener, whose filming of Abkhazia (a Russo-friendly breakaway republic in Western-looking Georgia) was shown on the partly-Murdoch-owned Georgian television channel Imedi. Georgians were expelled from Abkhazia as a consequence of the Russian-asssisted ethnic-Abkhazian uprising in the early 1990s and so Scrivener, who is himself half-Georgian, hid his national identity and posed as a “stupid English tourist” interested in going on holiday in a war zone. Because Abkhazia’s independence is not recognized by any nation (not even, officially at least, Russia), officials at the foreign ministry were only too happy to spend their time with Scrivener. He says: “So I just took a camera and started filming stuff – them, battle sites, stuff like that.” When he had left, he sent the tape to Imedi; because no Georgians had filmed Abkhazia for over a decade, the station was very enthusiastic and the film was shown on what Scrivener jokingly describes as “the Georgian Trevor MacDonald.”

As Scrivener’s experience shows, it is more than possible for an Oxford student to produce not only film with interest, but also with impact. However, the days of a generation ago, when the auditoriums would burst at the seams with students for whom the cinematic experience could be the highlight of the week, are now dead as dead can be: even Magdalen film society scarcely manages double figures in its average audience. You cannot help but feel that unless there is an even wider expansion of interest and involvement in the cinematic community, film-making in Oxford will fail to develop successfully. Nevertheless, there is a small but talented group of film-makers who are not to be written off.

Tom Corcoran

If you were to walk into Flyboys halfway through, you wouldn’t have missed much. The movie creaks slowly into motion as it explores characters’ backstories and sets up the scenario. Based on a true story, Flyboys follows a group of young Americans in 1916 who engage with the French airforce in the Lafayette Escadrille before the States had officially joined the effort.
At first the characterization seems shallow; on the one hand we are presented with the French commanders, mockingly portrayed as bumbling and fatherly—a very poor match for the Americans’ well-drilled servicemen. On the other, we have the collection of new recruits, each arriving in France with his own trite history. They begin training, learn to fly, and accordingly start making tasteless jokes about combat. The dynamic of the group is immature—more American Pie than Apocalypse Now. A film’s score is usually unintrusive, but here it is ever-present, a constant reminder of the emotions the film-makers want us to feel about characters who have, as yet, done nothing to justify our sympathy.

That all changes, however, as soon as they enter air combat. Suddenly we—and they—come to realize how vulnerable these men are in their fragile aeroplanes, flying very low and very slow by modern standards. They fly over No Man’s Land and shells explode in mid-air around them; this is scary stuff. Unfortunately, the dialogue remains stilted-as a result, there’s still some time to go before we can be fully sympathetic with these characters.
In the midst of the shootouts, a love story develops between our hero (played by a very heroic-looking James Franco) and a French woman (Jennifer Decker). The linguistic difficulties begin to grate fairly quickly, but she is looking after her late brother’s children who, like all the finest French movie-children, are good for chorusing ‘Bonjour’, and ‘Au revoir!’ The romance, however, does succeed in offering a respite from the gruesomeness of the aerial dogfights and beginning the process of emotionally involving the audience.

This process continues as the story develops and members of the squadron are gradually killed off. Each of the deaths is handled gracefully as appropriate to the character concerned and resists cheap sentimentality. Finally, the score fades appropriately into the background, and we’re left with a believable and sympathetic set of characters.

The film is visually stunning, with many extensive aerial shots over ‘France’ and ‘Germany’ – all, in fact, filmed over south-east England. The effects required to realize the squadron’s flights and aerial combat are entirely believable and there is a degree of real humour (not just the tasteless stuff) provided by the expressions of the squadron’s captain (Jean Reno).

The ending feels slightly abrupt, but not because the film is short; it is a sign of how good the film does eventually become that you don’t realize two-plus hours have passed when the credits roll. There is a realistic lack of resolution to the separate story-lines as the film effectively ends in the air. However, that is surely a realistic reflection of these men’s experience of the end of the war: one minute they’re fighting; the next they’re not.
The film suffers intially from an overbearing score and poor early characterization, but once we’re able to engage with the characters, it becomes and remains an exciting and moving piece.

Richard Flynn

The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros centres on an effeminate young boy (Maximo), living in the slums of Manila in the Philippines with his father Paco, a small-time crook, and two brothers named ‘Boy’ and ‘Bogs’. The opening sequences of the film, which show the young lip-glossed, colourfully dressed Maximo mincing through the backstreets of Manila are slightly difficult to digest but I was, ultimately, pleasantly surprised to find a sophisticated and provocative film.

When he is harassed by teenage thugs in a dark alley, Maximo is saved from a potentially horrific assault by the idealistic and somewhat naive policeman Victor (JR Valentin). At the tender age of twelve Maximo falls in love with Victor; but events take an unforeseeably sinister turn when Maximo’s brother Boy commits murder. Maximo alone knows of his brother’s crime and when Victor launches an investigation into the murder, Maximo is left torn between loyalty to his brother and adoration for Victor.

‘The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros’ is at once a story of innocence and corruption.; Maximo finds himself drawn into the very adult world of police brutality, crime and even love while still remaining a stranger to it. Maximo is essentially a fantasist- when the troubles of real life overwhelm him he loses himself in pirate screenings of romantic sagas and takes part in ‘beauty contests’ with his (equally effeminate) friends. So, his attraction to Victor is in reality based on childlike fascination and a yearning for security rather than actual sexual desire. Similarly, Maximo’s role as the ‘girl’ of the house, cooking is a form of make believe; Maximo playing at being an adult. Nathan Lopez’s performance as Maximo is both mature and nuanced; he captures the confusion and torment of being suspended between childhood and adolescence perfectly.

For Director Auraeus Solito, who grew up in Manila and describes himself as “a gay boy,” ‘The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros’ is a very personal story. Indeed, it is Solito’s familiarity with his subject (it was filmed in his old neighbourhood with many of his neighbours as the supporting cast) that results in such an engaging and convincing film. The social context of the film is handled skilfully. The web of poverty and corruption that eventually enfolds the family becomes the invisible villain of the piece. At the same time, the narrative is injected with a sense of hope by the bonds between Maximo, Paco, Bogs and Boy. Here, we discover an intimate snapshot of a close family brutalised by circumstance and struggling to survive amidst devastating poverty.

With a budget of only $19,000 and Filmed digitally ‘The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros’ is infused with a raw creativity. The experimental cinematography allows the colour and vibrancy of Manila to emerge alongside the darker undertones of the film. While ‘The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros’ will not appeal to all tastes, I found it simultaneously playful, moving and ultimately bittersweet. Definitely one to watch if you’re looking for something unique.
1 June
ICA, Key Cities
Mary Clare Waireri
 
 

The Cuppers competition upto this point has been unpredictable and as we head towards the semi-final stage we can recap on what has happened thus far in the tournament and also look ahead towards the final matches.
Last year’s finalists, Queen’s, have put up a strong challenge thus far, with a confident victory over Brasenose getting their challenge off to a good early start.

Perhaps the most impressive achievement in the tournament has, however, been that of Worcester who have got two teams through to the quarter finals. The first squad was tipped to make that stage, and victories over Wadham, Wolfson and Magdalen proved those predictions to be correct. The victory against Magdalen was particularly notable given the strength of their opponents; McTaggart and Thompson had proved a great doubles’ combination.
However for Worcester seconds to progress so far has been something of a revelation. A victory over an understrength Exeter side was perhaps expected but to beat the tradtionally strong New College in the last 16 was certainly a turn up for the books.

Looking ahead to the final stages there are three teams that stand out.
Last year’s winners St Catz have looked strong so far as they cantered to a series of victories; don’t bet aginst.
Queen’s also look a strong force with a squad of Carpenter, Grainger, Bowden, Hazzard and Pickles a match for anyone.

However Worcester 1 look to be the best pick as they have the deepest squad and having failed to mount a strong challenge last year they will be keen to impress in 2007’s competition.
Although the weather hasn’t helped this year, watch out for cuppers to dominate the end of term.Stuart Williamson

When ten Aboriginal men go off on a fishing trip, it becomes apparent that a young man has taken a fancy to another man’s wife. Her husband starts to tell him a tale: ‘A long, long time ago…a story far before long ago. Before we can remember.’ The black and white film blurs into colour as we embark upon a tale of two brothers’ love for the same woman. As the narrator puts it, it is a tale of ‘too many words, but not enough women’. This conflict over a woman leads to confrontation with another tribe in which a stranger is murdered. The upholding of tribal law, revenge, courage, love, and loss are all invoked in the course of the conflict. The story is simple, and told simply, but with a humour and emotional power that belies its naiveté. The director makes effective use of juxtaposed shots; sweeping panoramas of Northern Australian landscape cut suddenly to a close-up of the swollen belly of a naked young woman. Different languages reinforce this sense of contrast as the narrator speaks in English, but the actors in various local dialects; in fact, this is the first feature-length film in an indigenous Aboriginal language.

One hundred and fifty spears, ten canoes, three wives…trouble’ reads the film’s tagline, and when it gets it right the story is just that – funny and affecting. These funny moments are somewhat undermined as the sub-titles often reveal yet another melodramatic and doom-ridden epithet. Also, the director’s attempt to make a film which satisfies both local tastes and a Western cinema-going audience’s proclivities can stall it in platitudes and politically correct snapshots. Its greatest asset is David Gulpilil as its narrator, whose lively and witty voice-overs fully exploit the comic scenes. The film attempts to explore Aboriginal culture and beliefs, where we came from, why we’re here and where we’re going using local tribal people whose first ‘acting’ attempts are spot on. For a patient viewer, the film is a powerful exploration of Australia’s cultural heritage.

1 June
Renoir, Barbican,
Key Cities
Lucy Karsten
 
 

Catz came into their Cuppers quarter-final fixture against Trinity with a rather weakened side compared to the winning combination that secured Cuppers Victory at the beginning of term.

Not only the no.1 player, Blues’ Tim Weir, but also Matt Brooke-Hitching and Vadim Varvarim were unable to take their place in the 1st VI due to finals.
Outrageous weather conditions and nasty post-Summer Eights hangovers were a tough combination for both teams to deal with, but they braved it out, showing their commitment to Cuppers, making it onto the Catz/Trinity courts at 9.30am.

Play was possible due to the surprisingly good drainage of the courts which meant that the playing surface was not impinged upon too significantly and so conditions for the players were not too dangerous under foot.

Having the advantage of a bye in the first round, Catz had knocked Somerville out of the competition with a convincing win. With two years of Cuppers glory behind them, they approached the match with confidence.
Trinity had not been so lucky, with a tougher road to the quarters, but Oriel and Teddy Hall had both been defeated en route, so the squad were in high spirits and, more importantly, on an excellent run of form.
In the 1st round, Catz’ 2nd pair, comprised of Captain Alex Iltchev and Ryan Taylor, began with a solid victory against Trinity’s 3rds (Horatio Cary and Sian Roberts), only dropping 2 games.

The Catz top two Luke Reeve-Tucker and Lukasz Schachic met their match in Andy Luke and Russ Jackson, the Trinity 1st pair, with strong serving and some great doubles play from both sides.

Catz’ consistency paid off however, resulting in a close 6-4, 7-5 win which put Catz 4-0 up overall.
In the Second Round, Reeve-Tucker and Schlachic overwhelmed Trinity 3rds in little time, whereas for Iltchev and Taylor the game wasn’t so easy. The pair valiantly fought back from being 2-4 down in each set to draw level and eventually produced a shock 2-0 win against Trinity 1sts.

Being 8-0 up meant that only 2 more sets were needed to secure passage into the semi-finals for Catz.
Trinity were not willing to concede without a fight however, and the Trinity 2nd pair, Oli Plant and Captain Matt Johnston, played up to their opposition in the Catz 1sts and managed to halve the match. Catz’ 3rd pair, Jaroslav Broz and Peter Roberts, were under pressure to perform to secure victory for the defending champions, but they lost the vital fixture against the stronger Trinity 3rds.

Returning to the courts, having assumed the win after good play early on, Iltchev and Taylor came up trumps and produced some faultless shotmaking to take the first set against Plant and Johnston, securing Catz a place in the Semi-Finals with a dominant victory.

With finalists coming to the end of exams and the promise of some more tennis-suited sunshine in June, Catz’ prospects look good, with promise of a third Cuppers victoy.

They will face Worcester I in the semi-finals, who have paved their way to the semis in convincing style.
For Trinity, the season looks all but over, but with good young players in their ranks they will be confident of mounting a more serious cuppers challenge next year.
Alex Iltchev

This is not a work of art,” announces Czech surrealist Jan Švankmajer in the prologue to his 2005 film Lunacy. “It is a horror film … an infantile tribute to Edgar Allen Poe.” It’s also a philosophical allegory juxtaposing absolute freedom and repressive authoritarianism. It follows Jean Berlot, a young man suffering a recurrent nightmare in which two menacing hospital orderlies force him into a straitjacket to be taken away by a mysterious Marquis (based on the infamous Marquis de Sade). Appalled by the blasphemous, sado-masochistic orgy to which he is witness, Jean attempts to leave but only becomes more deeply entangled in the Marquis’ perverted games. Poe fans will recognize The Premature Burial in this first half, while the second, based on The System of Dr Tarr and Professor Fether, moves the action into the madhouse which is Švankmajer’s vision of the human condition.
This bipartite structure is only part of the film’s resistance to a single action. Immersion in plot and character is impeded by a series of deliberate anachronisms calculated to remind us that the story, set in early 19th century France, is actually an allegory of the modern world. The action is also punctuated by stop-motion animation in which human flesh comes to life in variously grotesque and comic sequences.

This is not horror in the usual sense. The range of responses it demands goes far beyond heart palpitations and seat-gripping. Overtly philosophical dialogue prompts intellectual engagement with the problems of individual freedom, but this is complicated by the appeal of individual characters. Pavel Liška’s Jean is by turns appealingly sensitive and frustratingly gormless, while Anna Geislerová intrigues as seductress Charlota. The piece is, however, dominated by the erratic energies of Jan Toiska’s Marquis. As the action progresses it is both increasingly farcical and menacing, with much more at stake than Jean’s future. The refusal to cordon off a generic realm to which violence and madness can be restricted makes the film horrifying in a deeper sense, as Švankmayer harnesses the powers of the gothic and grotesque for his disturbing political fable. Entangled in a mess of contradictory impulses and responses, with each potential avenue towards a solution closed off, the audience is left, like Jean, in a mental straitjacket.

While the ambitiousness of the film is largely successful, the animated sequences which play such an integral role in Švankmajer’s earlier works here verge on incongruity. Initially fun and satisfying in an “infantile tribute to Poe” kind of way, they become tedious and fail to mesh meaningfully with the main fabric. But this is a minor glitch in a captivating film – despite its intellectual and artistic baggage, it is consistently surprising, frequently repulsive, and often funny. Whether or not it’s a work of art, it’s anything but dull.

1 -14 June
BFI Southbank
Laura Bridgestock
 
 

What’s love got to do with it? Emma Bernstein on the gurus who would guide you to the perfect pickup
You might expect that the art of seduction had changed since 1 BC, but you would be mistaken. Thanks to Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, published that year, the Roman was well schooled in all manner of sly tips and tricks, which bear more than a passing resemblance to those proposed by today’s praeceptores amoris. But there’s a difference. Whereas the scandalous advice of the Ars Amatoria caused a sensation (rivalled only by a certain birth the following year) and resulted in Ovid’s extradition to the Black Sea, nowadays, the authors of dating manuals can enjoy the reverence and gratitude of their lonely-hearted readership. Undoubtedly the most notorious of the numerous guides to seduction is Neil Strauss’ 450-page tome, The Game: Undercover in the Secret Society of Pickup Artists, which has achieved cult status among its lovelorn disciples.

This is no simple, step-by-step instruction manual for the wannabe lothario. Rather, the book chronicles Strauss’ initiation into the “seduction community” and his transformation from a “formless lump of nerd” into his alter-ego, Style, the “master pickup artist”. Here, seduction is a field dominated by professional predators, relying upon mind control, hypnosis and persuasion techniques. Lest there be any doubt as to the credentials of The Game, Strauss’ own proficiency is confirmed when an incautious Britney Spears gives him her number.

One seduction method beloved of the pickup artist is ‘negging’, which is “to actively demonstrate a lack of interest in a beautiful woman by making an ambiguous statement, insulting her in a way that appears accidental, or offering constructive criticism”. Whilst it beggars belief that classic ‘negs’ such as “you look great – are you wearing make-up?” would melt hearts, ‘negging’ apparently has the dual effect of empowering the pickup artist and making the woman vulnerable. Other methods of seduction rely upon neuro-linguistic programming, “a form of waking hypnosis”, which uses repeated mesmerising hand movements and “flirtatious hypnospeak”. Yet its amoral techniques and nouveau jargon have only served to increase the allure of The Game, whether as a glimpse into a fascinatingly sordid enterprise or as a guide to follow with religious fervour.

However, in terms of sheer notoriety, a serious contender to The Game comes in the unlikely form of The Rules – Time-tested secrets for capturing the heart of Mr Right, its exact opposite in every way. Where The Game uses advanced mind-control and invented terminology, The Rules espouses the traditional approach, and is bloated on its own self-hype. The two authoresses assure readers that they too can “make Mr Right obsessed with having you as his by making yourself seem unattainable”, by  simply following their 35 rules. Their credentials are all in the book’s dedication: “to our wonderful husbands”. Quasi-scientific justification is offered for women playing hard to get; “men are born to respond to a challenge” and that “biologically he’s the aggressor”.

Can a “good marriage” really be based upon such superficial rules? Women are advised that “if you have a bad nose, get a nose job”, are told to limit phone calls to ten minutes and to end the date first. The publications of The Rules had feminists up in arms, but the authors argue that their empowering methods enable every women to get what she wants, namely “a marriage truly made in heaven”.

 It remains to be considered whether the approaches of these two very different books get results.