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A Real Life "My Sister's Keeper" Situation in Britain

LilSugar — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 14:00:48 PST

Just like the story line behind last Summer's tearjerker, My Sister's Keeper, a BBC documentary that aired last night is raising ethical questions across the UK as it follows two families' attempts to conceive "savior children" to provide their current kids with bone marrow transplants.

The children suffer from Fanconi anemia, a rare genetic disease that prevents the body from producing blood, and their families have brought religious, medical, and economic issues to the table as they seek out help to create siblings that will provide the necessary bone marrow to save their older kids. To conceive children that will serve that purpose, they must screen, and then implant embryos that meet the genetic requirements. One couple has privately funded their four failed IVF attempts and is embarking on a fifth. The other, who have already lost one child to the disease, have successfully fought the nation's National Health Service to obtain government funding for one of their attempts at a successful embryo transfer.

Do you think the government should help families genetically engineer babies if they help save the life of another being?

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What to Netflix: New DVD Tuesday

BuzzSugar — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 06:30:00 PST

There's a silver lining to TV shows going into reruns, and it's more time to watch movies! Happily, today there are a few highly-anticipated flicks, and I've gone through them to tell you What to Netflix. In addition to the three movies mentioned below, you can also catch Robert Pattinson's pre-Twilight dramedy How to Be.

Star Trek

This year's updated version of Star Trek turned the franchise on its head. With hot young things Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto in the beloved roles of Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock, the film completely changed the series' history so they could start over with a fresh new story.

It worked like gangbusters: the space-set action movie is clever, entertaining, and tons of fun. It manages to make a sex symbol out of a pointy-eared geek, whom I personally drooled over. The movie manages to pay respect to the original, so those fans are still happy, while pleasing folks who weren't fans of the first (like myself).

The DVD's got lots of extras, including deleted scenes, a special feature on casting and a gag reel.
95%

See two more movies releasing today when you

read more. Bruno Sacha Baron Cohen's mockumentary follow up to 2006's wildly successful Borat, Bruno is more of the same: cringe-worthy setups that make for laughs. This time, though, the envelope that was pushed in the former is torn to pieces in the latter. It's not for the faint of heart or easily offended, but if you like Baron Cohen's humor, you'll appreciate the awkward-beyond-words situations. I was torn - I wanted to laugh as hard as I did at Borat, but most of the time I was just wincing. DVD extras include alternate and deleted scenes, as well as enhanced commentary. 67%
My Sister's Keeper Need a good cry? Rent the tearjerker My Sister's Keeper. The drama stars Cameron Diaz as a mother presiding over her Leukemia-stricken daughter Kate, and the child they had in order to provide a kidney donor for Kate, Anna - who's played wonderfully by Abigail Breslin. When Anna sues her own parents for the rights to decide what to do with her own body, Diaz and her husband Jason Patric try to figure out what's really going with her. I was definitely moved by the film, but you'd have to be made of stone not to, considering the subject matter. If you read the book, take heed: the ending in the film isn't exactly the same. 47%

My Sister's Keeper: As a Mom What Would You Do?

LilSugar — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:00:09 PDT

My Sister's Keeper is a must see for mothers. Bring a box of tissues and prepare to empty your tear ducts during the entire experience. Unlike most films that escalate this one puts a lump into your throat just moments after starting. Cameron Diaz plays a pretty convincing Sara Fitzgerald, an attorney and mother of two who finds out her young daughter, Kate (Sofia Vassilieva), has cancer and her slightly older son, Jesse (Evan Ellingson), is not a donor match. So to save the child's life, Sara and her husband, Brian (Jason Patric) genetically conceive another baby, Anna (Abigail Breslin).

After eleven years of surgery and of donating body parts to her older sister, Anna hires a lawyer and sues her parents for the right to her own body. Sara is torn between the love she has for all her kids and the need to keep Kate (who needs a kidney) alive. It's hard to digest the tearjerker, and the powerful scenes played out at times with just looks between characters and not feel their pain, their confusion and love, and wonder as a parent what you would do. If you found out your child were terminally ill, would you genetically engineer another to save his or her life?

To see the emotional trailer,

Transformers Has a Massive Opening Weekend

BuzzSugar — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 06:30:22 PDT

Michael Bay's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen earned a five-day opening gross of $201.2 million, easily taking the top spot at the weekend's box office. The sequel nearly beat the best five-day opening of all time, The Dark Knight, which earned $203.8 million. Second place went to The Proposal, followed by The Hangover in the third spot.

Pixar's Up came in at No. 4 and became the year's highest grossing movie. Finally, My Sister's Keeper starring Cameron Diaz and Abigail Breslin had a modest debut, earned about $12 million and coming in at No. 5.

Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures

My Sister's Keeper: Climb Aboard the Weepy Express

BuzzSugar — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 09:30:17 PDT

In My Sister's Keeper, young Anna knows that she was genetically engineered and brought into this world in order to serve as a donor for her ailing sister, Kate. Well, My Sister's Keeper was engineered to make people cry - over and over and over again, for two hours. Anna sues her parents for medical emancipation, and by the end of this movie I wanted to file for emotional emancipation.

Anna (played sweetly by Abigail Breslin) was conceived after her parents, Sara (Cameron Diaz) and Brian (Jason Patric), learned that their young daughter Kate (the teenage version played by Sofia Vassilieva) had leukemia and their other child, Jesse (Evan Ellingson), was not a perfect match to be a donor for his sister. Throughout her life Anna has been required to give all sorts of things from her body to help keep Kate alive and now, at the age of 11, Anna finds a lawyer (Alec Baldwin) to sue her parents for medical emancipation. The lawsuit comes at a critical time: Kate's kidneys are failing, and without one of Anna's kidneys, Kate will die - soon. The story unfolds in a series of flashbacks that fill in some blanks about the family's journey up until this point. The flashbacks are interspersed with scenes of the present-day situation as Kate's condition worsens and Sara, a former lawyer, prepares to fight her youngest daughter in court. For more on this terribly sad movie,

read more. This drama is, of course, very moving. It centers around a kid with cancer! Of course there's inherent sadness just within that plot, and essentially, nothing more is really needed to make most people feel. But My Sister's Keeper takes this story and milks it for all its worth, stretching out heart-wrenching scene after heart-wrenching scene. I don't fault the movie for being sad, and I don't even think it's that poorly done, but it could have benefited greatly from some strong editing. Despite trying to cover a lot of ground in a relatively short period of time (we hear perspectives from each character - including quite a bit from Kate herself), the movie drags on languorously in many parts, and I just wanted to yell at the screen that we get it. It's sad. We're crying. There's so much more to this story, please move on! At first, it takes a little while to warm up to these people - particularly so with Diaz's Sara, not because her character is a tough cookie but because Diaz is so shrill at times it's hard to take her seriously. I wondered if this role was too heavy for her to handle; there's just something insubstantial about the way she portrays Sara. It doesn't ruin the movie, but I still wish they'd cast someone else in that role. Sofia Vassilieva's performance as Kate is well done and requires a delicate touch that Vassilieva capably displays - she's sympathetic as a cancer patient, of course, but she also convincingly plays another side of Kate: a giggly, sometimes insecure teenage girl who wants to date boys and look pretty. I knew going into this that my emotions would be manipulated, and they really do pull out all the stops - including the use of a heartbreaking song every eight minutes or so (like Greg Laswell's slow, haunting version of "Girls Just Want to Have Fun"). But even with all the music and all the horrors of cancer, by the end of the film, the sweet and complex bonds between these parents and these siblings are what deliver the gut-punch that forces the tears to start flowing.

Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.

Cameron's Still Thinking Outside the Box For Now

PopSugar — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:30:10 PDT

Cameron Diaz was up bright and early for another morning of promoting My Sister's Keeper, this time stopping by The Early Show with her costar Sofia Vassilieva. The ladies discussed their roles in the tearjerker, but last night at the NYC red carpet premiere, Cameron was ready to talk about her next project. She shared her excitement about working with Tom Cruise again and how much she loved getting her Walk of Fame star with Tom and Katie watching earlier this week. Tomorrow we'll see Cameron in My Sister's Keeper, but first here's a brand new preview of her scary movie The Box, which is out in October.

To watch Cameron's interview on The Early Show, just

Cameron and Abigail Keep Things Pretty in NYC

Molly — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 06:00:00 PDT

Cameron Diaz struck a sexy pose in white at the red carpet premiere of My Sister's Keeper in NYC last night. Her young costar Abigail Breslin chose a pretty pale pink while Rachel Zoe stuck with her staple drapey black. The movie is out tomorrow and will show us new sides of both Cameron and Abigail's acting abilities. Cameron has taken the lead on much of the publicity for the movie including her stop by Good Morning America yesterday and the unveiling of her star on the walk of fame on Monday. Breslin also got to talk a bit about what it was like to work with Cameron saying, "She kept things fun. She was always cooking us fajitas or Philly cheese steaks. There was a lot of kindness on set. It was very nurturing." Sounds like that hint of maternal instinct isn't so far from real life for Cameron after all.

To see more from the premiere including Jason Patric, Thomas Dekker, Sofia Vassilieva and others just read more.

View 15 Photos ›

Images include: Cameron Diaz, Abigail Breslin, Jason Patric, Thomas Dekker, Rachel Roy, Rachel Zoe, Sofia Vassilieva Getty

Buzz In: What "Tearjerkers" Have Failed to Jerk Your Tears?

BuzzSugar — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 08:30:17 PDT

Having read Jodi Picoult's novel My Sister's Keeper, I am going to see the movie this week fully prepared to leave with puffy eyes and a fistful of soggy tissues. But then again, what if I don't cry?

Have you ever anticipated crying at a "tearjerker" movie so much that you aren't moved at all? I had about six people tell me I would "bawl my eyes out" at A Walk to Remember, but that movie left me cold and most certainly dry-eyed. And a friend of mine told me that the first time she watched Beaches, it didn't affect her at all - perhaps because she'd had so many people assure her of her future weepy reaction to it.

Have you ever watched a supposed tearjerker and failed to see what all the fuss was about (literally)?

Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.

Buzz Book Club: The Conclusion of My Sister's Keeper

BuzzSugar — Fri, 29 May 2009 06:30:14 PDT

Welcome back, Buzz Book Club readers. I've been re-reading My Sister's Keeper this month so that I can discuss the book's interesting topics with you before the movie comes out. Are you ready to talk about this controversial ending?

First, here's a recap of how the Book Club goes: Every week I've suggested chapters to complete by the next post (which, in this case, went up every Friday in May). In these weekly Book Club posts, I posit a few questions to prompt discussion in the comments section.

Also, don't forget to keep an eye out next week for my June book club announcement!

To discuss last week's section of My Sister's Keeper, in which we read the section marked "Monday" through to the end,

Buzz Book Club: My Sister's Keeper, Section Three

BuzzSugar — Fri, 22 May 2009 08:15:54 PDT

Welcome back, Buzz Book Club readers. I'm re-reading My Sister's Keeper this month and am having a great time reading all of your thoughts on this provocative book. This was a brief section, but there's still much to chat about.

Here's a recap of how the Book Club goes: Every week I'll suggest chapters to complete by the next post (which, in this case, will go up every Friday in May). In these weekly Book Club posts, I'll posit a few questions to prompt discussion in the comments section.

Of course, you are always welcome to read beyond the weekly chapters, but please don't spoil anything in the comments! After the jump you'll find some questions that struck me as I read this section.

The next section: Start at the section marked "Monday" and read through to the end. We'll chat about this final section next Friday, May 29.

To discuss last week's section of My Sister's Keeper, in which we read through the section marked "The Weekend" (stopping before "Monday"),