Fantasy is a powerful tool that brings us out of our reality and into a place of maximum control, typically to ultimate gratification. Our fantasies are the controllable wishes that directly contrast the out of control aspects of our lives.  Fantasy often happens in places of pain or boredom.  Fantasy serves as a coping mechanism to pain, whereas in boredom it often reveals our hearts by illuminating our desires and wishes. Fantasy is unplanned, which is why it typically happens in the moment of the stressors themselves.

When do you find yourself fantasizing most often?  What do you fantasize about?  For those of us struggling to make ends meet, perhaps it is fantasizing about what we imagine as an affluent lifestyle. For the timid, fantasy may be about walking into a bosses office, parent’s home, or other authority figures presence and displaying boldness. For Clarice “Precious” Jones, she fantasizes about being adored.

Oscar is knocking at my door. Better get in my licks… 

The Blind Side. A rich white Memphis housewife takes in a hulking homeless black teenager and teaches him about God and football. He returns the favor by becoming a first-round NFL draft pick and an inseparable member of the family. Surefire, straight-arrow inspirational sports film succeeds as family entertainment and even manages to be mildly—microscopically—critical of the privileged social elite. Sandra Bullock does the subtlest acting of her career while director John Lee Hancock (who also adapted the bestselling book) does some careful steering through choppy emotional waters.

Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire. Despite the accolades and celebrity endorsements, an enormous slog.

I really wanted to like Precious. Everyone is talking about it this awards season as the movie to beat. It’s been a festival favorite. Oprah produced it, etc…

And it is definitely a good film. But it’s certainly nothing like “the movie of the year.”

Precious is the story of an obese, illiterate 16-year-old black girl in Harlem with a lot of problems. Her mother abuses her in every sense of the word. Her father rapes her (and gets her pregnant twice). She is HIV-positive. Her firstborn child has Down syndrome. And the list goes on… Her life is bleaker than you can possibly imagine.