
Chris Brown, Rihanna, and Kanye West were among the big winners Sunday at the
American Music Awards. Brown took home the biggest prize of all, winning Artist of the Year by beating out Lil Wayne, Coldplay, the Eagles, and Alicia Keys. It was one of three awards for Brown, who also won Favorite Male Artist in both the pop/rock and soul/R&B categories.

When I left my screening of
The Secret Life of Bees I felt comforted and content, and it took me a while to understand why: This movie calls back to older, Southern-set, empowering movies like Steel Magnolias and Fried Green Tomatoes. Those films celebrate womanhood and the importance (and potency) of female friendship, all against the unique backdrop of the American South. The stories are beautiful and sentimental, with tragedy and heartache going hand-in-hand with love and humor.

It's not every day that the film adaptation of a well-loved book appears to capture the same atmosphere and sentiments that the book does, but in my opinion, the trailer for
The Secret Life of Bees looks like it might do just that. I loved the novel by Sue Monk Kidd; it was one of those books that left me feeling sad at the end because I had to part with characters I'd come to care about deeply.
The story follows 14-year-old Lily (Dakota Fanning) whose mother died, leaving Lily with an abusive father.