Month: August 2013

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movie

2 Guns

I didn’t go into this movie with high expectations. I mean, just look at it:

Guns and shooting and guns and explosions and Bill Paxton being hilariously evil and southern. And let me be honest: this is one of those rare movies where what you see in the trailer is exactly what you get. There are guns and shooting and explosions and a bit more brutality than is perhaps necessary and oh lord the banter. It’s basically a buddy cop odd couple movie with a bit of a twist, since the two buddies start off by betraying each other right before they get betrayed by everyone else and driven back together. That’s the entire motive behind the story. There’s not a back story for either character you ever learn, and you don’t need to; they live in the now, dealing with the current crisis and exchanging quips between bullets.

And yet, I fucking loved this movie. I think I might have laughed for this more than I did at This Is the End. Because ultimately, it’s not about the little twist on a fairly standard plot. It’s all about Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg snarking at each other like a married couple. Those two actors (with a side of Bill Paxton) carry the entire movie and make it fun, because they seem to be having a damn good time with every moment they’re onscreen. It’s fast paced, plot twists exist just to give the apparently indestructible Wahlberg and Washington another chance to hilariously bicker, and the soundtrack is excellent.

2 Guns is ultimately two grown men snarking, blowing things up, and then exchanging more witty banter. It’s exactly as advertised on the packaging, no surprises. If you like that kind of thing (and I sure do) it’s more than worth the price of admission.

Categories
movie

Europa Report

This is an independent science fiction movie. It was released a week ago, but the release is so limited it’s not in any theaters near me. Thankfully, it’s also available from On Demand for $8, which made it cheaper than actually seeing it in a theater. I was excited about this movie. It didn’t disappoint.

To be honest, watching it on the home screen I think might have worked better than at the theater, just because of the film style (found footage, so generally not high quality) and the CGI wasn’t the greatest; what flaws I was able to see on a 55″ flatscreen would have no doubt been all the more glaring on a movie screen.

This is definitely one of the most scientifically accurate movies I’ve seen in a long time. (Per Phil Plait, JPL scientists were consultants on the film, and it looks like the filmmakers really took what they said to heart.) And the science really plays into the story and helps drive and define the plot. It’s the motivation and not the villain, which was very refreshing. It also serves as a good reminder that accurate, basically present-day science still has some amazing storytelling possibilities for speculative fiction in it.

At its heart, I think the movie is very much about science, and the wonder scientists feel, and the sacrifices they are willing to make for the sake of answering one of the greatest questions to ever face our species: are we alone? The cast really sold it, I think, and Daniel Wu and Anamaria Marinca were particularly good I think.

And there’s an adorable reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey at the beginning, which I loved.

The movie is mostly found footage style, which is a format I’m increasingly disenchanted with, though I understand why it’s used–it’s generally a cheaper option. For the most part I felt like it worked pretty well, and it put us in the action with the crew. I didn’t like how some of the jumps and cuts were done, since it really didn’t fit with the narrative frame of “here we edited this together for you.” It felt like a transparent attempt to make the movie seem scarier than it was or needed to be.

This was not a scary movie, despite what the trailer wants you to think:

If you believe the trailer, this is going to be a “found footage thing where team of astronauts goes to alien world and gets horrifically eaten by sneaky, evil aliens that may or may not look like giant space spiders.” And it’s really not. It’s tense, it’s heart-wrenching at times, but this is definitely not a horror movie.

SPOILERS

Continue reading “Europa Report”
Categories
my exciting life

And because you asked: pictures with ties

I attempted to take some pictures with the new ties. Or rather, I attempted to have my picture taken, and my housemate Kathy tried to take my picture. I’m not very good at this picture taking thing, I’m afraid.

IMG_20130811_165937_819This picture kind of indicates how I feel about the whole exercise, really. I feel weird and self-conscious and never know what to do with my hands. But anyway.

IMG_20130811_165029_210

 

Funny story, I actually did a shoot once with a photographer when I was in my goth phase. And I actually had a lot of fun doing that. Because she told me what to do. I just can’t come up with anything on my own.

IMG_20130811_163640_324

 

 

Moral of the story: I need an adult. Or I just stand there and look awkward. Someone tell me what to do.IMG_20130811_162426_201And Mike says hi.

IMG_20130811_162528_524

 

 

Categories
writing

It’s a cover!

 

bloodinelkcreek-500Less than a month away–Blood in Elk Creek releases on 9/6! I can’t wait to share this one with you!

 

Categories
my exciting life

In which I have a good time… shopping?

 

 

The weirdest thing happened to me today. I went clothes shopping, and it didn’t end in an internal whirlwind of self-loathing and depression. In fact I… had a good time. I. Had a good time. Shopping for clothes. No really. Do you understand how bizarre and inconceivable this is?

I approached the trip with my normal sense of dread. I needed to get some nice work pants, and pants are historically one of those things guaranteed to make me feel like shit. Because, you know. If you’re fat, you are banished to the plus-sized section (if the store even has one!) or a specialty store. And frankly, for me to try to find pants that I like isn’t easy to begin with. I want pockets, damnit. I basically just want men’s pants that will fit over my generous ass and I don’t know why I can’t have that.

The last time I went to Lane Bryant, I actually was too small for most of the clothes, so I figured I would try Nordstrom and just see if they had anything that even fit me. I asked the clerk for size 18 pants, and she said they didn’t sell anything bigger than a 16. Uh oh. Sinking feeling. But she said I should try, so… okay. We picked up every pair of 16s we could find and I went to try them on.

I had to ask for about half of them in a size 14 instead. This is something that has never happened to me. Ever. I haven’t been able to wear “regular” clothes since I was in high school. And suddenly… I can go anywhere, and be able to find something that might fit. I still can’t quite mentally grasp that.

It’s amazing what a little thing like that can do. Even when you don’t actually like any of the choices available, just knowing that you could wear it if you wanted to is huge. And it does kind of confirm how I’ve always felt plus-sized women are treated, like we’re unwanted as customers and treated as shameful. That made shopping an incredibly shitty experience for me before, particularly since I never liked many of the looks that got put together for larger women at stores like Lane Bryant. Argh.

Anyway, suddenly discovering I could wear size 16 pants kind of made my day. Then finding size 16 pants with pockets at Brooks Brothers continued to make my day.

But the thing that really made my day/week/month?

imageI’ve suddenly begun to love clothes because I’ve found a way to dress that makes me feel good. I feel confident and playful and happy. And phase two has been ties. I love ties, and I now have shirts that will work well with them. I don’t want to borrow my husband’s ties. I want my own. So also at Brooks Brothers, I talked to one of the sales associates and had him help me figure out colors.

That was fun. Hella fun. The poor guy was a bit stumped. Apparently they don’t get many redheads coming in to that store. He eventually had to pull over one of the other sales associates, and then we spent the next twenty minutes holding up various ties while the guys decided if they looked good with my hair and skin or not. It was magical and hilarious.

I’m excited. About wearing clothes. Write this day on the calendar.

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Uncategorized

Why Can’t Spiderman Be Gay?

(Yes, I’m late to this. But this topic keeps coming up, over and over again. And I believe in the power of stories to be retold.)

Good question, Andrew Garfield. And predictably, some people have freaked the fuck out about it. (Don’t believe me? Just look at the comments if you want to come up hating humanity.) Kind of like a couple years ago, when some people suggested that it might be pretty awesome if Spiderman were black, and perhaps played by Donald Glover. And some people freaked the fuck out. To me it sure sounds the same as when some people bitched on Twitter about the Bishop of Carlisle in Richard II being played by Lucian Msamati (a black actor). The Shakespeare fandom is just a somewhat different demographic, which generally tends to have better spelling.

I don’t make any secret of the fact that I love seeing existing roles have their gender, race, and sexuality bent. (Hey, I even just talked about it in a quest blog post.)

Now let me explain why.

Stories are by necessity living things. They may be written at a particular time and about particular people, but if that was all they were, we wouldn’t keep reading them, watching them, over and over. And more important, we wouldn’t keep retelling them. We tell the same stories over and over again because there is something magical in them, some vital spark that makes them as powerful today as they were on the day they were written–or sometimes even more powerful. Even more so with legends, because they’re about how human beings relate with each other, with the world, what we think we are and who we believe we can be.

And because stories are about us and about our place in the world, we want to interact with them. We want to see ourselves in them. In fact, stories invite us to imagine ourselves in the shoes of the protagonist. That’s what gives them their power. We connect ourselves with characters who are different races, genders, sexualities, because there is still a fundamental humanity that speaks to us. Different facets of human experience are still human experience.

I get that there are characters who are quite literally defined by some aspect of their race, sexuality, or gender. Shaft would not be the black private dick that is a sex machine to all the chicks if he wasn’t black. But tell me, what fundamental part of the Bishop of Carlisle is defined by his race? What fundamental part of Peter Parker is defined by his sexuality?

What I find so upsetting about people saying Peter Parker can’t be gay, can’t be black, is that they are basically saying the experience of a gay man, of a black man is alien. That they cannot or don’t want to connect to a black man, to a gay man and find that same fundamental humanity and imagine themselves in his shoes even as we are all expected to constantly imagine ourselves as straight, white men. That only a white, straight man could possibly have that experience, that story. That only one tiny facet of the human viewpoint is valid.

That stories are static, dead things that cannot change and grow with us.

And I mourn for their imaginations.

(And you should totally go read: Why Batman Can’t Be Black.)

Categories
movie sexism you need to do better

Hey Thor 2: Star Wars Called, It Wants Its Poster Back

I had about three seconds of excitement yesterday when Marvel dropped the new Thor: The Dark World poster on Twitter. I’m so excited about that movie, I can barely stand it. And I really loved most of the posters there were for the original Thor. So… yay! And here it was!
thor poster
Well. That’s sure a thing. I don’t like the composition (she says as if she has more artistic ability than the average potato).It’s really… busy. Unlike the posters for the first movie. But more than that… wow. It feels really familiar. Reeeeeeeally familiar.
iron man poster…wow. Yeah. But no, that wasn’t what I was thinking about. We have to go back further. Much further. Like maybe…
star-wars-return-of-the-jedi_movie-poster-01A bit like this, perhaps. Except while they put Leia in the stupid-ass bikini, at least she’s not clinging to anyone. But of course, Star Wars really owes its artistic allegiance to far pulpier roots…
UFO_MovieArt_01
Just as an example. That’s art from a release called UFO from the 70s. Though then we need to add a little side of this just for full replication:
eileen-dreter-barely-a-lady-cover-art-by-jon-paul-ferraraAnd there you go.

Why the hell are we still doing pulp movie clingy woman and manly men posters in the year 2013? There is just so much about the poster that I really, really don’t like. About both the TDW and IM3 posters, really. I’m not a big fan of women with their necks broken, to start with. But the position is so classic clingy damsel in distress oh let me lay my hands on your manly manly chest so you can save me. I loathe it. Particularly because in IM3, Pepper was pretty fucking awesome. She saved Tony’s ass twice. She was not the damsel in distress.

That gives me hope that maybe the TDW poster is a big troll just like the IM3 poster kind of was. (Or maybe we’ll get an awesome joke poster for Captain America 2, like this idea.) But it just upsets me on a basic level to see another awesome female character turned into the visual clingy appendage of the guy. I actually like Jane as a character. She kind of fell by the wayside when I first watched Thor because I was too busy losing my shit over the complexities of Loki. But in subsequent viewings, I’ve come to really like Jane.

In a super hero movie, it’s nice to have some normal human characters around who aren’t just living furniture. That they’re regular people means yes, they occasionally need their bacon saved by the super hero, because that’s what super heroes do. But both Pepper and Jane are eminently competent women, and they solve some great plot problems by being excellent at what they do. While I didn’t really buy the Thor/Jane romance in Thor, I loved that Jane was the one who decided to kiss him. I loved that she was impulsive and smart and very much had a life and a being outside of the whole romance angle.

The one thing that I’m still mad at Thor for was what I felt was the lazy writing. We need some redemption–quick, have him instantly fall in love with someone and that will make him a better person because boobies are magic! It was cheap, formulaic, and trite. I’ll still be seeing the new movie who knows how many fucking times because Loki. And Sif. And Loki. And Frigga in armor. And Loki. But I’d love to not give myself a headache from rolling my eyes through the rest of the movie. At this point I’m already assuming that Jane will get kidnapped by Malekith and Thor has to almost die again to save her life because obviously Malekith blowing shit up across the Nine Realms isn’t sufficient motivation for the man to be self-sacrificing. Barf. (I’d love to be wrong, by the way.)

I’m sick of shit like that. I’m so sick of it. It’s ultimately disrespectful (if that’s the right word) of two really awesome characters. It reduces Jane to just being an object to motivate Thor, and it reduces Thor to someone who can only stir himself to do great and noble things and grow as a person if his dick warmer is in danger.

Really. Do better.