Before we get going, you need to know that this post contains monstrously huge plot spoilers for THE IDES OF MARCH. We’re not joking — scroll down at your peril.

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The trouble is, it’s kind of hard to talk about THE IDES OF MARCH (out today on DVD, it was nominated but totally — unfairly — shut out at the Golden Globes on Sunday night) without spoiling the plot, because one of the major story lines — which is nowhere in any of the trailers, for once — is meant to be a huge crazy surprise. And the reason this story line isn’t in any the trailers is not because the trailer makers were feeling magnanimous and didn’t want to spoil the movie for you. Nope. We’re guessing, rather, that the trailer makers — who aren’t the filmmakers, fyi, and whose only goal is to get bums into theatre seats — didn’t want to scare off potential viewers by mentioning the topic that “rhymes with smashmortion” (as one character so memorably put it in KNOCKED UP).

That’s right: THE IDES OF MARCH is not just a tense political thriller -slash- political morality tale starring people way too good-looking to ever be seriously involved in politics (George Clooney and Ryan Gosling). It’s also a bit of an abortion tale. And while we don’t think the filmmakers intended this movie to be an abortion morality tale, it sure comes across that way at times.

The film takes place during the Democratic primary in Ohio and follows the campaign trail of a Democratic governor Mike Morris (Clooney). As Ohio goes, so goes the nation, we are reminded. Clooney’s press spokesman (Gosling) soon starts a booty-call relationship with a pretty young blonde campaign intern, played by Evan Rachel Wood. Actually, she’s the one who initiates. Their flirtatious dialogue feels incredibly real in that cheesy way that smart young people hit on each other. But then it turns out — here’s the real plot spoiler if you haven’t left yet — that she also once slept with hottie married would-be-president Clooney. Oh, and also, she accidentally got knocked up by him.

So far, so realistic — it’s the oldest story in the book, in fact. Promising future leader of America — happily married, good guy, blah blah blah — sleeps with hot young thing. And it’s not exactly a stretch to think that a 19- or 20-year-old would neglect to insist on a condom in such a situation, would neglect to mention she’s not on the pill.

The intern tells her booty call press spokesman that she wants to get an abortion — she’s matter of fact about this because she’s a smart young woman with a bright political future ahead of her. And given the fact that just hours earlier she’d been playfully texting Gosling to set up their booty call, and minutes earlier they’d had hot, light-hearted booty call sex (they laugh about the fact that he’s watching poll numbers on TV while doing it), she doesn’t seem overly distraught. Upset, yes — because abortions are upsetting. But not exactly suicidal. Again, so far so realistic.

But then. As Anthony Lane wrote in The New Yorker, this movie is ”slimy with unfeasible plotting.” Because after she leaves the abortion clinic, she finds out — or thinks she finds out — that her booty call may spill the news about her secret pregnancy and abortion. And so she overdoses on pills and boozes and dies in her hotel room.

Um, what?! Is this really 2011? Sure, we know that abortion is still considered a shameful secret all over this country. And yes, this character had earlier noted that her dad — the chairman of the Democratic National Committee — was a die-hard Catholic. But we just find it hard to believe that an otherwise stable, happy young woman — an educated woman, a playful woman, a woman clearly comfortable and confident with casual sex, a woman who was pretty clearly her own sexual agent — would suddenly turn suicidal after an abortion.

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Stop the presses! A detergent commercial with just a normal dad doing laundry.

For our book club, we’re reading the 2003 novel “We Need to Talk About Kevin” by Lionel Shriver.* I, Lo, knowing nothing about the book or its author, began reading and was amazed that a male author could create a female narrator that sounded so authentic and convincing, especially regarding childbirth and motherhood. That is, until halfway through the book when I happened to catch a glimpse of the author photo on the inside back flap: turns out Lionel is a woman.

I must say, after my initial surprise, I really wasn’t surprised — after all, how could a man have captured the mental cog work of such a complicated female character? But then there was a part of me that was a little disappointed — both in the fact that Lionel wasn’t a man, and in the fact that I was so quick to dismiss a dude’s ability to get in touch with his feminine side. It would have been kind of cool to have my expectations challenged, especially as someone who’s always raging against gender stereotyping.

I didn’t have to wait long: flipping through last week’s Time I came across this article: “A Few Good Men: Work It is a drag, but TV does right by guys elsewhere” (you have to have a subscription to read the whole article). It comes straight out and calls the new men-in-drag show sexist: “The concept — men do man work, and ladies do lady work! — feels bogus at a time when some of TV’s best male characters are taking on different roles at home and work, without (literally) shedding their pants.” The review goes on to …

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* Cannot wait for the movie starring Tilda Swinton!

In a review of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo  (the new U.S. version starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara), the US Weekly critic Mara Reinstein writes of Lisbeth Salander, “The brazenly bisexual, leather-clad, withdrawn title heroine…” Wait — brazenly what? What does it even mean to be brazenly bisexual? The phrase suggests that being bisexual is a sort of kink, something akin to playing with whips and chains or having sex in an adult diaper. A lifestyle choice, if you will. Or, perhaps…

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If you’ve ever rolled your eyes at that iconic image of the bikini-clad woman sudsing up a muscle car or rollerskating along the boardwalk, then have we got two videos for you. First, the high budget one: LMFAO’s “I’m Sexy and I Know It.” As our writer friend Grant Stoddard recently put it in a Facebook post, never before has banana sling been so explicitly celebrated in a music video. And it’s shot in a way that gives the illusion of three-dimensionality, if you know what we mean. (Best line of the song? The chorus refrain “I work out.”) Yes, it’s funny and tongue in cheek, and yet the high production value gives it a weight that makes it feel like genuine equal-opportunity objectification…

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Any movie with full frontal male nudity in the first five minutes is automatically a winner in our book. And that’s what you get with 2008′s NIGHTS AND WEEKENDS, the last in September’s “Lover’s Lounge” series on the Sundance Channel (airing Saturday night/Sunday morn, September 25th at 12:45am and again at Tue night/Wed morn at 2:30am – set your Tivos). There’s a few uber-realistic sex scenes in the flick, one of which is so realistic it’s actually painful to watch. That can actually be said for the entire movie, which documents a long-distance love affair feeling the strain — the awkward moments of sharing deep thoughts, throwing adult temper tantrums, engaging in pillow talk nobody else should hear…

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Lo here: Em has always been a Howard Stern fan. As a staunch, man-hating feminist, I never got on board. Too many sad strippers willing to be reduced to body parts for love and attention — at least in the K-Rock days. No, for provocative, foul-mouthed, sex-related audio content, I’ll take Kevin Smith’s Hollywood Babble-On with Ralph Garman any day. Now they’re by no means above female objectification, but they believe in equal opportunity objectification. Take for example, their regular segment on Liam Neesson’s infamously large endowment (“Liam Neesson’s cock is so big….”). Smith will even admit on air to homoerotic urges without fear or shame (hello, Thor!). They do a show every week loosely arranged around all things entertainment-industry — so if you’re an US Weekly junkie like Em, you can get your celeb gossip AND your dick jokes all in one place!

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We’re suckers for any kind of teenage, coming-of-age, love story. So we were delighted to discover this new movie, “The Myth of the American Sleepover.” An official selection of Cannes Critics Week and winner of the Special Jury Prize at SXSW, the film follows four young people on the last night of summer — their final night of freedom before the new school year starts. The NYTimes’ A.O.Scott wrote of it, “A lovely debut feature. What [director David Robert] Mitchell gets splendidly right in this quiet, observant film, is the unsteady mixture of sophistication and naïveté that is central to the modern American teenage way of being in the world.” It’s out now in limited release, with a 78% Rotten Tomatoes rating. Check out the trailer:

Read about another IFC film, “The Orgasm Diaries,” on SUNfiltered

Now evil has a name: Manic pixie dream girl. Actually, the name was coined back in 2007 by the AV Club’s Nathan Rabin, but somehow we only just learned about it the other day. Back then, Rabin was panning Elizabethtown and used the term to describe Kirsten Dunst’s character, second in annoyingness only to Natalie Portman’s character in Garden State:

The Manic Pixie Dream Girl exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is an all-or-nothing-proposition. Audiences either want to marry her instantly (despite The Manic Pixie Dream Girl being, you know, a fictional character) or they want to commit grievous bodily harm against them and their immediate family.

Last year Em found herself — don’t ask why — agreeing to see Jackass 3D on opening night in L.A. (On a date night, no less.) In what was either a moment of pure genius commentary on sex and technology — or else just plain jackassery — the movie featured a 3D dildo bazooka fight, in which a giant 3D wobbly dildo flies across the screen. Needless to say, the audience found it hilarious. And this is exactly what we think of when we hear the phrase “3D porn.”

Turns out a Cantonese filmmaker has a slightly more highbrow notion. (Emphasis on the slightly, we assume.) Sex & Zen 3D: Extreme Ecstasy, a Cantonese-language film billed as the first major 3-D porn movie, has been acquired for theatrical release in North America. It’s described as an “erotic costume drama” that is based on the classical Chinese novel The Carnal Prayer Mat, and it’s busting box office records all over the place. And there’s full frontal male and female nudity. In 3D, let us remind you.

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Its title may be tired, but the documentary LET’S TALK ABOUT SEX is as relevant and necessary as ever in a country that’s schizo about sex, with teens paying the price in crazy rates of pregnancy and STDs. A winner of the Youth Award at the Mostra de Ciencia e Cinema Festival and an official selection of the Provincetown International Film Festival, the documentary (watch the trailer) airs tomorrow night (Sat, April 9) at 10pm on The Learning Channel (TLC). It may be the first show on that channel that’s actually educational and enlightening (hello? Cake Boss? Say Yes to the Dress? I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant?!?).

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