Kameron Hurley

The Runaways: When Good Stories Go Bad

It’s so sad when a movie with a potentially great story goes so wrong.

I am willing to forgive Kristen Stewart the whole Twilight thing because she had such a great Joan Jett look. The problem was she just wasn’t given much at all to work with. Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie was even worse, with only slightly more to work with. And if you think the other three band members got much more than a name and a snide remark or two to substitute for “characterization” you’d be dreaming.

In between images of trash-throwing, leather-wearing, and band members making out, I wasn’t really sure what the overall point of the movie was. It opens with Currie lip synching to David Bowie in a talent contest, and I thought, hey wow cool this could be like a trippy version of Velvet Goldmine only totally reimagined for The Runaways!

In fact, it was nothing of the sort as the protagonists stumbled through random disjointed scene after random disjointed scene.

At one point, J. walked in while Kristen Stewart was slunking around and said, “Is this movie even good?”

“No,” I said, “but I keep thinking of what it could be. It’s like watching those terrible Star Wars prequels where you keep going ‘oh, that’s such a good idea! They could have done something so cool with that!’ and then being endlessly disappointed with how they failed to tell you that story.”

In fact, the movie was one big messy stew of failed potential. It’s such a wonderful story – all-girl rock band in the glam 70’s made up of these incredibly young and talented girls. It has the potential to do and say and be all sorts of things. But in the end, I wasn’t sure if it was a love story between Joan and Cherrie or a heavy-handed cautionary tale about mostly off-screen drug abuse or how rock n’ roll can kill you or save you or…? Oh hell, it wasn’t even trying to be any of those things. It was just a poorly put together montage of moments from what could have been a great story. The only decent part of the movie was the soundtrack, which of course, was their actual decent music and, later on, lots of great just-Joan-Jett music.

At the end of the day, I knew nothing more about these characters. Joan is the only one with any kind of articulated goal, which is to be a rock star, and that was nice, but it was so muffled and stuffed and padded with so much other garbage that the actual people in the story and their motivations got lost.

The sexism was heavy-handed and sloppy – sexism is less about a guy shoving his hand in your crouch and more about the other Joan in the Mad Men getting replaced by a guy as script reader, and the epically sad and resigned look that fleetingly passes across her face.  But either the director didn’t feel these actresses could do subtle or she didn’t believe her audience would understand subtle, so it’s all random make-outs and orgasms without dealing with stuff like concern over contraception or pregnancy, which you’d think would figure in more with an all-girl band (granted, most of the making out was within the band, so…?).

Regardless, there was a big opportunity missed to create real, interesting people with a real, interesting story. How I could be bored five minutes into the movie and bored right up until the end with such a great subject just baffles me.

But why did I sit through it, then, if it was so boring?

I once asked an old friend of mine why she watched “The L Word” since it was such a formulaic, poorly written little soap opera. She thought about it for a minute and said, “You know, if you’re gay, and especially if you’re a lesbian, you don’t see yourself much in pop culture. So when you find stuff that features stories about you, even when it’s bad, it’s just very comforting to watch.”

And that, in essence, was why I kept watching this stupid show. Here was this story about an all-girl rock band, a movie mostly filled with women all talking to each other, where the two central relationships are between Cherie and Joan and Cherie and her sister, and they are making money and building careers and making out with each other, and it was just so nice to see a story about women that wasn’t, you know, about shopping or finding a guy who’ll marry you.

Which made it all the more disappointing that it sucked so damn much.

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RED Means Stop

J and I went out to see Red on Saturday night at the cheap theater. The previews were great, but it performed a bit poorly and showed up at the cheap theaters quickly, so I wasn’t holding my breath. This, despite the draw of Helen Mirren as a retired assassin among Bruce Willis’s crew of misfits.

I know.

The cast is great in this one, and has a fun time. A bunch of retired CIA operatives find themselves being hunted down… by the CIA.

But the problems with this one start early. It feels like one of those movies where there were just too many hands stirring the pot, so you come out of it with these great big gems of meat, but then there are these odd banana peppers and apple slices in there, and then the stove explodes.

It opens with retired operative Bruce Willis on the phone with a woman at the pension department. Apparently, he’s called her 22 times about missing pension checks. In fact, he’s just been calling to chat her up. She’s had very bad luck with men and dating. They commisserate. Over the phone, he says he’ll be in town soon, and maybe they can finally meet?

She says sure, but call her first. She is a funny, quirky sort of person, and pretty likable, so at least we see some of the appeal for these two.

Well, you know, everything goes to hell the way it does in these kinds of movies, and Bruce Willis flees from assassins who shred up his house. There are some fun fight scenes here. Willis then breaks into the pension lady’s house and kidnaps her, explaining along the way that he’s doing this for her own safety because someone is trying to kill him and she will be a target.

Um. Ok. Back up.

This is a weirdly uncomfortable turn of events for a lot of reasons. First, because it shows an utter disrespect for the female “lead” (such as she is). He doesn’t find a neutral place to contact her and speak to her. Doesn’t even properly explain himself in her house (outside of her house would have made more sense). Can he not call her from a pay phone and set up a coffee date? Nope. No explanations at all. Just bound and gagged and thrown in the car.

Ick, right? Ick because you also know she’s going to be his love interest, which means she’d be falling for her captor.

Gah.

We get quite a lot of this ick before she frees herself and is then assaulted by a police officer, at which point she realizes that Everything Bruce Willis Says is True, and then she doesn’t have to spend the rest of the movie bound and gagged, thank god. But here’s the thing – couldn’t they have done this up front? Have assassins already in her house? Did we really have to go through the stranger-I-met-over-the-phone-kidnaps-me thing?

The answer is yes, we had to go through it. Because somebody thought it was funny.

That was, perhaps, the most insulting part. That this was supposed to be a really funny turn in the movie. It wasn’t.

You know, I was watching an SNL skit yesterday that was parodying Julian Assange. And he’s wonking on and the audience is laughing along at some mediocre jokes about Mark Zuckerberg and he says something to the effect of, “If somebody made a movie about me, the joke would be trying to keep it rated R!” or something along those lines. The audience goes totally silent. The comedian looks a little surprised, but recovers and moves on to the next joke.

See, that’s the thing. Rape, and accusations of rape, are, you know, not funny. Why are they not funny? Because they are real threats to women. It’s like joking about prison rape in a prison. Not so funny when it’s an actual threat to you, let me tell you.

At any rate, things got better after she got untied and the whole band of CIA retirees gets together. Morgan Freeman and some guy whose name I forget have some OK scenes, though once again, Freeman’s intro is of him coercing a female nurse to bend over in front of him because you know, ha ha, that’s so funny!

Who wrote this?

The good news is that Mirren’s assassin character may be one of the better developed in the whole movie, which let me forgive some things. She gets an old love affair, some battle stories, and some of the better lines in the movie.

Anyway, the band plots to break into the CIA to find out who’s killing them. Willis gets a great fight scene with one of the operatives trying to kill him (played really well by Karl Urban, who’s also given quite a bit to work with from a character perspective). This isn’t the climax of the film, though. It keeps going. There are some dirty arms dealers, and then a plot to kill/kidnap the Vice President (played by that creepy guy from Nip/Tuck).

The heist bit of the movie really comes together for the kidnapping of the VP (which, you know, is so much less creepy because nobody on the team is, you know, romantically interested in him. Writers take note!). Everybody in this movie was having a fun time (especially Willis and Mirren), I just wish the script hadn’t been butchered to pieces.

There’s some more la-la stuff in here. Fixing this movie would have required clipping that whole stupid kidnapping scene and just cutting to assassins in her house, which neatly avoids about 10 minutes of ridiculous movie time, and abbreviating the arms dealer weirdness, and possibly avoiding the CIA breakin, which is like a second movie climax. Weird pacing all around. Fun, on the whole, but poorly put together from a narrative perspective.

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The Warrior’s Way: Ninja Assassins and Blowing Shit Up in the Old West

The Warrior’s Way is a beautifully shot, silly little film that’s apparently been stuck in post-production for years. This doesn’t surprise me, as anybody who starts mixing genres is going to have some trouble with marketing. In this case, it’s a mix of martial arts movie + western, with all the silliness that that implies. In fact, there’s even more silliness than that, as our martial arts hero exiles himself to America and takes up in a town largely populated by a defunct circus troop where he takes over an old friend’s laundry business and starts teaching the local tomboy how to throw knives and cut people up.

Yes, I’m serious.

And if that description didn’t pique your interest, this is not the movie for you.

In the Far East, a super assassin, the “best swordsman in the world – ever” kills every member of a rival clan save one. He saves this child and exiles himself to the American west to a small, decripit little town that has suffered under the tyrannic rule of some random group of Bad Guys. I’m not really sure why the Bad Guys are terrorizing this town. Or why they terrorized the town once, apparently, and then just came back a few years later for the sake of the plot to terrorize it again. You know they’re bad guys mainly because they try to rape the heroine (twice) and because they kill people indiscriminately. Why do they do this? No frickin’ clue. Because the plot says they do. Handwave, handwave.

As our hero begins to rebuild his life among the circus freaks and with our tomboy heroine, he is also hunted by the members of his assassin’s guild, who are pissed off that he didn’t kill the last member of their rival clan. They believe that the only way to truly “win” the war against the clan is to kill the last member. After all, when she grows up she will just start to hunt them down, and the whole cycle will start again.

Kate Bosworth of Blue Crush fame (she will always be “that chick from Blue Crush” to me) plays our heroine, a scrappy tomboy whose family was murdered by aforementioned Bad Guys. She scarred the one who tried to rape her by throwing hot oil in his face (a touch which reminded me of the scar that Red Sonja gives the Evil Queen, after the guards rape Red Sonja. Nothing new under the sun). This incident, of course, inspires her to take up arms to seek revenge (whenever he rolls back into town? Or has he been periodically visiting and she just hides? Who knows), and now she practices throwing knives. Before our hero entered the scene, his predecessor was also teaching her how to weild a blade. So, you can see how I’d appreciate this movie, despite the ridiculous and annoying and overdone near-rape scenes.

There’s a lot to like in this movie if you’re willing to sit back, relax, and giggle along. They’re pretty clear about what kind of movie it is right from the get-go, with supertitles that tell us the assassin on the screen is now the “Best swordsman in the world – ever.” It’s a silly little romp that spends a lot of time planting flowers in the desert only to blow them up (literally and metaphorically).

The fight scenes are pretty spectacular, the blood is over the top, and it has a couple of really great lines. My favorite is when the hero finds our heroine trying to throw knives, and she’s missing her target. He turns to her and says, “It’s not your arm that shakes. It’s your heart.” Somehow, blindfolding her and taking a few good lessons with the hero cures her of this (handwave, handwave), but it wouldn’t have been nearly as good a movie if she didn’t get her revenge, too.

I appreciated that she had her own story arc. I didn’t appreciate that (spoiler, duh) she gets stuck with the kid at the end, which was pretty much the stupidest thing in the whole world based on everything that came before. What, she had a kid sister once so she knows something about kids? I guess she did make the kid a diaper when they rolled into town, so she must be the perfect person to give a kid to?

Arg.

Of course, by then most folks are dead, so there’s not a lot of other options.

At any rate, the movie stuck to its mixed genres. Plenty of martial arts action, stoic hero, *and* it’s western sensibilities – random bad guys, big shootouts, plucky heroine. This movie was about fifty million times more fun than half the crap that’s out right now, but it’s going to have a much narrower audience because, yeah, weird little movie with ridiculous plot holes. Geoffrey Rush even shows up as a filthy, drunken marksman. Weird, I know.

Depending on your taste, this might be a fun film to see after a couple of beers. Don’t expect anything profound, but if you want to see some stuff get blown up, cut up, shot up, and giggle at movie tropes (and roll your eyes at ridiculous rape-means-we’re-bad bad guys) while a red-headed heroine throws knives, this could be fun.

Also, circus freaks. Blood feuds. Ninja assassins.

Sometimes I suspect I was just delighted that they’d gotten all of these ridiculous things into one movie.

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The Mad Men Tango

One of the things that makes Mad Men so consistently watchable is that it defies soap opera conventions. We’ve come to expect certain things from TV shows. We expect these people to live crazy, over-the-top lives full of great tragedies and great good fortune (but mostly, great tragedies). We expect miscarriages, drowned children, car wrecks, true madness, terrible accidents.

Instead, what Mad Men gives us is tangible, relatable, believable, every day tragedy. J. and I watched the season finale last night, and while Don was out philandering with yet another woman – leaving his children alone in a hotel room – J. said that he expected one of the kids would have disappeared, or the baby would have died or… something, while Don was out getting it on. This would *surely* be Don’s wakeup call about all the philandering… No way, I said. This isn’t a soap opera, and that’s one of those convenient character-spurring-moments that doesn’t happen in this show.

Sure enough, we pan to the lamp and get on with the show with everybody still intact.

In fact, the one truly outrageous accident I could think of in the show was when account exec Ben Cosgrove runs over the foot of the new head of operations with a John Deere mower last season. And one of the reasons it was so outrageously believable is because nothing like that happens on this show. But, just like real life, weird and wacky does occasionally happen. Just not, you know, every damn week of your life (OK, so, there was the weird California thing where Don runs off with that crazy family of free-love rich folks for three weeks, but I’ve blotted most of that out).

They also take great pains to ensure that we see lots of time passing between and during episodes. It’s not like there’s some wacky hijinks going on at the agency every week or some tumultuous thing in their homelives getting upset every week for the benefit of TV audiences. We just get the highlights. In fact, a great deal of the actual action in this show happens offscreen. What we see are significant slice-of-life character moments. We get The Milkshake Scene, and Betty-giving-Don-the-keys scene, and Peggy wearing the client’s product to a client meeting scene, and etc. This makes the show clip along very quickly, and lets us judge our protagonists during low, high, and simple everyday  moments.

Everytime somebody gets pregnant on this show, I still expect The Tragic Miscarriage or the Botched Abortion, but it never happens. Instead, they get to make tough choices and deal with tough consequences – just like real life. Most women don’t get “saved” from having to make a decision by a convenient miscarriage. And, let’s face it – well off women like Joan don’t generally go to bad doctors, even during the era of illegal abortion (illegal things, as we all know, only apply to poor people, no matter what time period you’re in. The rich have always been able to do pretty much what they want).

In fact, the only absolutely wild thing about this show is just how many women Don Draper sleeps with. Thing is, as a successful ad executive in the 60′s, this is probably one of the more believable things about this show. It’s just hard to believe anybody would have that much mental space to manage their affairs. That said, unlike, say, Nip Tuck (talk about a soap opera!), all of the women he’s gone to bed with are distinctive characters, not plot coupons. They have sex with him for their own reasons, and figuring those out and seeing how they gel with his (or not) is one of the best parts of the show. There’s something I’ve liked about nearly every love interest, even the prostitute. Because, again, they’re well-rounded, well-acted characters. Not just “Don’s love interest this week.”

This is a show that I’m drawn to not simply because it’s set in an ad agency, but because it deals starkly with relationships between people. How people justify being horrible to other people. How they use (or are used by) others. The decisions we make when it comes to job vs. family. Gender relations in the workplace. Power negotiations.

The best part is that it’s not bad guys vs. good guys, either. All through last night’s episodes, I kept saying, “Don is such a dog! Ack, he’s such a dog!” and then Betty shows up and I’m like, “Ack! She’s such a little kid! Such a selfish little kid!” The beauty of this type of show is that not liking one character doesn’t mean you have to like the other. Just because Betty married a dog who cheated on her doesn’t make her the victim. Not in the least. She negotiates her own life. Makes her own choices. And some of them are nearly as dog-like as Don’s. I don’t sit around boo-hooing that she’s some kind of victim. Nobody is good or bad. They’re just people. And they are doing their best with what they’ve got, in the situations they’re in (except Don, who is a dog!).

In fact, what I love about watching Don is watching his moral compass at work. He simply does things without thinking of anybody else. He’s truly the most selfish character in the show (which says something considering it’s a show that includes Pete Campbell), but he believes that everything he’s doing is absolutely right. He does whatever it takes to get what he wants, and not even his family is sacred. It’s whoever you need to crawl over to get to the top… and yet, he keeps up this illusion that he’s a good husband, father, and family man. The people in his life are there to be used. No more, no less. And when he is done, he simply dumps them. And hands them some money or something. Desperately hoping they will go away.

The supposed irony of this last episode is that Don re-marries before Peggy. But then, Peggy doesn’t have a male secretary, so she’s at a distinct disadvantage. The best scene, by far, in the finale was the one between Peggy and Joan as they commiserate over their crazy office life and Don’s puffed-up pride at his latest engagement. “Here, ladies, you do all the work, and we’ll keep drinking and fucking our secretaries, ho-ho.”

And yet, just like the characters themselves, the gender relations at the office are not bad guy/good guy. They simply are. Peggy fights for her raise. Joan just says “thank you” when she receives a title but no raise. They come from different schools of how to get ahead in life, and they have far different tool boxes. Watching them negotiate power for themselves inside and outside of the office on par with the mechanics of guys’ personal lives is what kept me watching this show in the first place.

Because, as noted, Don Draper is a dog.

And, you know, that’s another thing. I’ve been hoping Joan would dump her ridiculous fiance-and-then-husband forever. The show had one of the most believable rape scenes I’ve ever seen – non-consensual, not-brute-forced sex – between Joan and her fiance (again, sticking to that “Here’s how most things happen to people. Not here’s how we imagine things happen to people” idea), and ever since then, I kept hoping she’d dump his ass. But, you know what? Life keeps going. How many people have had non-consensual sex with their significant others? Their relationship keeps going. They have bad times. They have good times. But nobody’s all bad. Nothing’s all bad.

I love that this show explores why and how people stay together, even if they are sometimes terrible to each other. We love our black-and-white society. We love “Well, he hit you, so leave” or “He cheated on you, so leave.” Or “They didn’t give you a raise, so leave.” Finally, there’s something I can actually watch on TV that doesn’t say, “Someone did X, so they are they Bad Guy.” It says “We’re all bad guys. We’re all good guys. It’s just a matter of how much good and how much bad at this particular time.”

I don’t know where this show is going, or how long it will stick around, but as long as the writing and acting stays at this caliber (more milkshake scenes, less California threesomes), I’m certainly going to stick around for the ride.

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Why I Fucking Hate Dollhouse

So I’ve gotten through all the Pawn Stars available on Netflix, and now I have a stack of gender and Islam books to get through, and you know, hey, sometimes I need a break.

It’s been a long week here already and its only Wednesday. I’ve got a new dog that won’t crap outside, bad weather, unresponsive city officials, and lots of day job.

So last night I turned on the TV. Drank a couple beers to get up my courage, and watched a couple more episodes of Dollhouse.

Why? Why oh why?

Because there are, in fact, people who like this show. Who talk on and on about how Whedon is doing this amazing transgressive things with it. Who say it really hits its stride in season 2, and if you can just sit through all the used and abused women until then, it gets really interesting.

Also, of course, I was exhausted and vegetative.

That’s always how they get you.

I stopped watching initially after episode 2, when our supposed heroine is hired out to some guy as a whore/target practice. Yeah, I’m serious. It’s The Most Dangerous Game. Again, this might be more interesting if I wasn’t around to endure this whole “ha ha hee hee isn’t that funny” hoax.

As it was, it creeped me the hell out, and I stopped watching.

I wanted to give Whedon credit. You always want to give folks you see as allies credit for stuff. But here’s the thing: just because you were responsible for writing and producing the majority of the Buffy series and Firefly was a lot of fun doesn’t mean you get a free pass when you’re creating bad TV.

Last night I squigged through three more ponderous episodes of misogynistic hate. Sexy ladies being used, abused, wiped, and bought like so much merchandise. You can go on and on about how this is really an in depth critique of modern day human trafficking, or tell me that Whedon really is just building it all up and showing you how bad it is so he can tear it all down.

But the fact is that 1) The Madam isn’t actually in charge. She answers to a guy, which she’s on the phone with in ep 3 or 4 and 2) Alpha, who plays around with folks and also wipes folks, is a guy 3) And Topher, of course, the genius wiperoo of them all, is a skeevy, nasty sort who I hate more and more as each episode goes on 4) Echo’s protector/body guard is a guy 5) the “good guy” trying to save Echo from all these bad people is, of course, a guy. 6) the only female regular character outside of Dollhouse is obsessed with our “good guy” in a romantic way and even brings him meatloaf or lasagna early on (I suspect she’s likely a Doll, too).

It’s gross.

Really.

It’s a bunch of women being used, controlled, and abused  by guys. Orbiting guys. Serving guy clients. They aren’t always whores. Whooop-dee-doo. Sometimes they are safe-crackers who suddenly become mind-wiped cucumbers. At. every. single. step. along. the. way. these people are people manipulated and controlled. And it doesn’t get better. Telling me, “Alpha will help inspire them to be freeee!” or “that FBI guy will help set them freeeee!” or even, “Echo will someday become a super weapon!” are all stupid, boring, cliched, hackneyed things. There is nothing at all redeeming about this show. Not one single thing.

To add insult to injury, Eliza Dushku just doesn’t have the acting chops to pull this off. And the overt sexualization of all the women just gets annoying. And the wiping and wiping and wiping gets old. He had a couple episodes to give us the script that she then unpacks and rebels against. I’m just not going to sit through half a dozen or a dozen or two dozen episodes of abusive hate in order to get around to the point.

Knowing that Whedon produced it makes it even more insulting. You always react strongest when somebody you perceive as a part of your “in” group appears to betray you. I still feel the same way about Dollhouse as I did after the second episode: Whedon could have been spending his time creating far better shows. And instead, wasted several years of his life putting together this piece of crap.

Did anyone get past the first two episodes? Why did you keep watching? I only made it through three more because I was a little buzzed and hoping to find something redeeming; you want to be able to find what others find. Was that the only reason ya’ll kept watching? Because you kept hoping it’d get better?

Because I have to tell you – it’s a physically painful show for me to watch. Every episode, you’re just waiting for somebody to sexually assault the heroine. Every. Single. Episode. That gets really exhausting and nerve-wracking. Folks might say, “Hey, good TV should *make* you uncomfortable!” But to what end does my discomfort serve? Will it teach me more about myself or the world to watch a heroine manipulated, controlled, and assaulted for hours on end? Even if she rebels against it later because she gets her special powers? Cause like the UF stuff I gnawed on earlier, she’s never going to escape being a doll. She’s absolutely surrounded by men manipulating and controlling her.

Smacks a little too close to home for a lot of people, you know? And her getting superpowers as bestowed by somebody else (Alpha or whoever) just isn’t going to make up for all the gross human trafficking stuff.

I realize these are interesting things to you, Whedon, and that you’d like us to be uncomfortable. But there’s being edgy and transgressive and then there’s Hunting for Bambi. Five episodes in, there’s still little to nothing to distinguish one from the other, except yours is TV and there’s was a marketing ploy.

Here’s to hoping that Pawn Stars season 3 shows up on Netflix soon.

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Lunchtime Limbo

While I have a few minutes here at lunch, how about some updatitude:

Pandorum was a great little lower-budget SF movie about one of my favorite tropes, which isn’t done enough in movies (likely for budgeting issues). Also, unlike most French films and pretty much all apocalypse novels/movies, the desperate folks were far more interested in eating the ass-kicking female character than raping her, which I appreciated. Because, you know, when you’re starving and desperate you’re far more likely to eat somebody than rape them (dunno what you all feel like doing when starving, but sex – forced or consentual – generally isn’t the first thing that comes to mind). Also, space zombies.

The longer I work at an ad agency, the more I love Mad Men. Am on season 2 and still in love. I had somebody say they thought all of these characters are intensely unlikeable, so they couldn’t watch it. I actually find all of these characters intensely interesting because of their crazy faults. I love watching how other people justify their poor behavior. I love watching people put home/work into neat little boxes and pretending those worlds will never meet. I love watching the lies and half-truths and understandings people come to that allow them to do business every day. And I love watching that struggle. In part, what I love so much about this show is that nobody is perfect. Even more, I love watching people navigate a social climate slightly different from my own. They say that folks who read a lot of books tend to be more empathetic, in part because they’re exposed to so many different points of view. I don’t have to agree with what you’re doing to understand why you did it. Mad Men is a wonderful romp through rich-white-people-are-crazy-land.

I finished reading Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood, which was a great little SF jaunt. Atwood’s poo-pooing at SF the last few years had really turned me off to her, and I’d forgotten what a good writer she is (if you haven’t read The Handmaid’s Tale, how is it you’re a reader of this blog??). It’s a solid little book about gene splicing and the end of the world. Strong female protagonists, rich setting, fun thought experiment, and did I mention end of the world? However, unlike Pandorom, she did fall into the “all bad men want to do is rape women especially during the apocalypse when they are starving” thing, which was a tougher suspension of disbelief than aforementioned gene-splicing apocalypse. Have I mentioned that there are certain sexist tropes that just annoy the tar out of me? She does also seem to have a love of exploring the social intricacies of whorehouses, as many of the scenes at a whorehouse in this book reminded me of some of similiar tone/feel from The Handmaid’s Tale. I’ll be picking up Oryx and Crake and giving Atwood another go.

My preference for PCs has evolved into blind hatred for Macs now that I’m spending my 9 hour days in front of one at the new day job. Control click THIS, Mac!!! Yeah, not a fan.

Also, actually pulled out and submitted an old trunk story a couple weeks ago. I haven’t had anything in circulation in a few months, and it was nice to get something out there. Need to get back on that writing schedule that I’d redone and then had to can when all the free time I was expecting wonderfully dried up. No complaints! Just paperwork.

Annnnnnnnd…. I’m off.

Tags: Fictions, media
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Things Which Are Great

I’ve been busy with the new day jobbe, but wanted to share some things which are great:

Alice in Wonderland
Never been a fan of Alice in Wonderland. Annoying little kid wandering around a crazy place eating and drinking indiscriminately and poo-pooing about like it’s all a great inconvenience. Tim Burton’s take (with a lovely script by Linda Woolverton), was absolutely stunning. Not just visually, which you expect from a Tim Burton film, but a fantastic coming-of-age-and-finding-yourself story about a 19 year old Alice whose destiny it is to lead a rebellion against the Red Queen. Yes, really! Check out the Joan of Arc armor! There were some heavy-handed moments, but nothing so egregious as you wouldn’t expect it in a fairytale. It was wonderfully cool to see a girl-comes-of-age movie (she even ends up on the prow of a ship at the end… like Titanic!) where she gets to pick up a sword and slay a real dragon. The performances are all amazing, too. Anne Hathaway as The White Queen takes herself just-not-seriously-enough to make her incredibly likable. Helena Bonham Carter is a perfect Red Queen, and though Depp is often over the deep end, it’s not too terribly annoying because he’s not on screen the whole time.  Mia Wasikowska is a strange Alice – I especially like the dark circles under her eyes – but the strangeness is what makes her so interesting. Great story, great actors, great visuals – and, have I mentioned? – Alice gets to slay? Yeah. Highly recommended.

Dragon Age: Awakenings
This is the sequel/expansion for Dragon Age: Origins. I am a sucker for a lot of Bioware games, primarily because they’re full of great stories, great characters, and a level of interaction with other characters that you just don’t get in any other game. It’s a tough followup to Dragon Age: Origins. Origins was longer, had more in depth relationships with the characters, and all that. Awakenings got off to a rough, slow start, with lots of installation issues, game crashing, and annoying lack of access to character conversations. Once you figure out their new system for character interaction, it gets easier (basically, you can’t talk to your folks any time you want. When you unlock a prompt, it either automatically starts the dialogue, or you have to select an object to trigger the conversation). But, you know, the gear is better, you make more money, and the choices are sacrifice this or sacrifice that. Lots of ambiguity. Lots of gray. I love that. Also, ass kicking female characters. There’s still the requisite “chick with boobs hanging out,” but as with Origins, they’re not *all* that way, which is what makes the difference, to me, between a lazy, sexist game and one that acknowledges that hey, yeah, woman have different characters and personalities, too! They don’t all run around with their boobs hanging out! Was also pleased that my golem armor didn’t have the obligatory boob-enhancements. What the hell kind of armor forms a breasplate with two custom boob-protrusions? Really? Nice to get away from that at the end with my warrior and the Sigrun the dwarf rogue. Also, very nice Buffy moment there at the beginning with Mhairi. Love you too, Bioware. Overall, A-.

Tags: Geekery, media, The F Word
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