Got a question for Tuffita? Email her at tuffyluv@collegecandy.com to be featured in her column every Tuesday! Ask it all.

Dear Tuffy Luv,

Top five best quirky movies for contemporary women and why. Okay, go.

Movie Luver

Dear Movie Luver,

Cute.

Okay, I don’t know about bestbest, but here goes, in no particular order. And remember, this is Tuff’s personal opinion, so–yeah. Don’t start hating or anything.

Ghostworld

A great weird little parable of a movie (with Thora Birch, from before they glammed up Scarjo into a blow-up doll) about a girl who can’t figure out how to grow up. She doesn’t fit into the modern world, so she tries to escape into the past with an older guy (a fabulously pathetic Steve Buscemi) who is obsessed with the music of the 20s and 30s, all while avoiding her best friend, who actually is becoming an adult.

Children of Men

The movie begins when the youngest person on Earth dies. This is a sad day because people have stopped being able to procreate. Everything is chaos. And then our main character becomes aware of a pregnant woman, a miracle, who he must transport to safety in a place that may or may not exist.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Was there ever a more romantic movie about the issues of love in the modern world? This gorgeous little flick is about love and memory and where loss is important in maintaining both.

The Host

A family dramedy disguised as a monster movie, The Host introduces us to an extremely dysfunctional family who must pull together in a time of crisis. When the only innocent of the group, the young daughter of our screw-up hero, is taken by a giant monster in the water by the family store, everyone comes together to rescue her. It’s laugh-out-loud funny and, at times, devastatingly sad. Just make sure you get the subtitled version–the dubbed version is horrible.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch

A musical like you’ve never seen before. Hedwig is about a German transsexual who just wants love–and a rock ‘n’ roll career. This one’s hard to explain, but it’s wonderful and touching and smart, and the music is amazing.

Anyone got any others?

Hearts & Skulls,

Tuffy Luv

Back in February I reported that the new Spike Jonze/Dave Eggers film adaptation of everyone’s favorite children’s book Where the Wild Things Are was in a bit of trouble for being TOO scary for the young’uns.

According to New York Magazine (via Playlist), the film is still not doing well. Hot on the heels of Speed Racer’s big box-office upset, Playlist is reporting that Jon Vitti (of Alvin and the Chipmuncks screenwriting fame…Yikes!) has been hired to help out, and that the production is “deeply troubled”.

There were rumors that Jonze had been fired from the project after Warner Brothers scheduled re-shoots and ordered rewrites of several scenes. However, Jonze is reportedly still part of the project, despite not having final say on the end result.

The film was originally slated to be released in May of 2008 (umm…right now!), but was then pushed to October of 2008, and now has been pushed all the way back to October 2009. Warner Brothers is apparently still worried about the film being too scary for kids and too confusing, so the rewrites and re-shoots are aimed at making the story more “clear”.

What could possibly be unclear about Where the Wild Things Are? Sounds like the studio is trying to make the quirky and sometimes troubling story more palatable, at the expense of Jonze’s vision. Over at the MTV Movies Blog they’re reporting that Forrest Whitaker (the voice of the Wild Thing ‘Ira’) wants the studio to leave the film as is, saying that Max’s mother “ends up having a boyfriend that becomes like a monster to him…people have to build trust with the people their parent starts to date…These are real issues that the character deals with, and I hope that [the filmmakers] continue to explore them, because kids need to see that; they need to see that other kids are dealing with it.”

Some people are telling Jonze to leak his original cut, before the Warner Brothers intervention, but most think that’s unlikely to happen.

What do you think the final cut will be when the film is (hopefully) released in 2009? Will it be Jonze’s portrait of a disturbed young boy, or a lighter interpretation of the classic kids tale? Which would you prefer to see?

“We are no longer doing movies with women in the lead” Robinov was quoted as saying this week, using two recent less-than-stellar female driven films (The Brave One, staring Jodie Foster, and The Invasion, starring Nicole Kidman) as evidence for his claims.

What. The. F*ck? Um, what year is this???

Robinov is just convinced the reason neither film did well with audiences is because a woman was in the lead.

Apparently, the options of bad writing, convoluted plots, and poorly conceived advertising are not viable, and the only way to make sure a movie of his never bombs again is to make sure the leads are always sans boobs and vagina.

Movies with male leads bomb all the time, but Robinov doesn’t care about that obvious fact, nor does he seem to remember the fantastic success of Mean Girls, The Devil Wears Prada, Erin Brockovich, or anything helmed by the Olsen Twins.

Do women often headline films by themselves? No. But it’s not because they don’t have the same drawing power as men, it’s because chauvinists like Robinov are given the ability to “no longer do movies” in which the star is a female.

Men have controlled Hollywood for decades, and every time a guy utters something as disgusting as Robinov’s words and is not challenged, the male hold only increases.

If a movie is rotten, it really doesn’t matter who’s in the lead.

Nobody could have saved I Know Who Killed Me—and that’s a fact.