To my sheer undiluted joy, I joined Netflix this January. The month that calls for tightening of purse strings, Lidl shops and nae booze welcomed the free one month trial. I intended to spend all my dark and cold evenings in bed with my laptop on my, well lap. As the days turned into weeks I was beaming as I steaming streaming and adding a lot to the personal 'my list' scrolling bar. Then I ventured to the row below and it had a new very lengthy titled genre. 'Dark Films with Strong Women Leads' huh? I could hear the ghostly voice of Netflix whispering in my ear "It's all for you Nicola, it's chosen for yoooou!" Not really phased by the abstract nature of the idea of a dark film - Netflix didn't just mean horror, it was more the strong women part.

Back in 2009 director Gillian Robespierre made a little 20 minute film, a rom-com no less, called Obvious Child about a woman called Donna (played by Jenny Slate of Marcel the Shell fame) who has an encounter of the genital kind (please begin to refer to sex like that, it's what 2014 is going to be all about) with a guy called Peter that results in an unwanted pregnancy. It's not too much of a spoiler to tell you that hijinks and abortion ensues.

What? Yeah, a storyline featuring an abortion. I know what you're thinking, she regrets it yeah? The film must be constructed of flashbacks about the mildly traumatic termination of her pregnancy which she regrets forever. Or it all goes tits up like in Dirty Dancing and somebody's doctor father has to come and administer an unexplained injection. OR she almost goes through with it but then falls for the unlikely information that while she has yet to develop a bump that blastocyst is ready for its manicure, a la Juno.

Because she's famous and because she has a film coming out Anne Hathaway has been carted out a lot in the press lately. I have been aware of Hathaway but other than seeing The Devil Wears Prada and her hilarious Sisters song on Saturday Night Live I can't say I have ever really paid much attention to her. I was made very aware of her extreme diet in order to play the emaciated Fantine in Les Miserables thanks to various media outlets and I was given no reason to believe (post Vati-Con scandal) that was not the most interesting thing about her.  

Hathaway didn't really talk about her weight loss because it was done in order to emulate a starving woman driven to sex work in revolutionary France. YAWN. There were only so many articles to squeeze out regarding her cropped hair (her character sells her hair and teeth), what to do, what to do?

I cannot tell you how much I love the Oz stories. I love Judy Garland in the Wizard of Oz film, I love Miriam Margolyes's more faithful reading of the Wizard of Oz on the Story Teller cassette tape and book series only my sister and I seem to know about and I love the film sequel (or fauxquel I suppose, as it had nothing to do with the original film other than the adoption of ruby slippers) Return to Oz.

This fondness for the Oz stories began in childhood, which is my quick disclaimer as to why Wicked and Enchanted are not listed under my Oz loves. Unless L. Frank Baum had something to do with the plot I don't want to know. Smoosh the characters Mombi and Princess Langwidere together in Return to Oz all you like – just don't think you know the strange motivations behind the witches and their actions. 

Perhaps because the princess features so little in it, even though she's supposed to be the main protagonist, Sleeping Beauty is one of my favourite Disney films. Maleficent is of the same school of Snow White's evil queen step mother, devastatingly beautiful, elegant and bloodily glamorous. These Disney films probably inspired little girls not into a life of worthy drudgery awaiting their prince but to dream of the day they would be allowed to wear blood red lipstick and have minions.

At least we know what happens to the villainesses in Disney films. OK they die but they die doing what they love and how many people can say that (not many and not just because death is more than a Facebook status). This is probably why Maleficent is now being portrayed by Angelina Jolie in a new film all about her. She's the star! It's the princesses I feel sorry for, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. Death could be sweet but they've got the task of living happily ever after with a man they've had one effing duet with.