I think "The Collector" is required watching.

I'd never even heard of this movie, which is probably ridiculous, and everyone else already knows about it. I only caught it today on some antenna-based movie station, which probably had it as a "horror" genre film in line with the coming Halloween holiday--which falls short of its meaning. But this tense, well-acted, psychological thriller starring Terence Stamp ("Kneel before Zod!) and Samantha Eggar actually is a brutal story about a Nice Guy who kidnaps a woman and basically works through so many dynamics of misogyny and abuse that it is practically a handbook of what fucks woman-blaming Manboys be.

This might not be a movie for everyone. It represents a stalker and kidnapper who has isolated a target and cut her off from everything, controlling her behavior--not always through violence, but sometimes through manipulation and even seeming pleasant at times. Such a stalker! He buys art books, makes tea, buys toiletries! He provides a place for his victim to stay and proclaims he's a gentleman and pretends he's above violence, but the drama between his need to control and her desire to be free is tense and real.

The title comes from his hobby of collecting butterflies. There is a deep scene where he shows his victim his collection, and she comes to the realization that she has been collected, like a thing to be had, dead, just like they are.

I'm not going to give away all that unfolds, but it is grim and sad and still and all, compelling and revealing. I'll admit I was rooting for a way for a happy ending to somehow come out of it.

Spoiler alert--no, watch the movie. The movie and the novel, by John Fowles, are available at Amazon. And probably elsewhere if you skulk about more than I did.

The November Man: A Netflix find I watched In the Theater

I have a soft spot in my heart for action movies--I have watched and enjoyed (because of my ability to post-phone criticism) openly illogical and over-the-top shoot-em-ups like all three Expendables movies, because I grew up watching Rambo and Commando and all the Steven Seagal movies and the Chuck Norris Missing in Action movies, and so, so much more. I viewed them as a nice break from the teen slasher movies.  So I am forgiving of mindless action flicks. The November Man isn't technically an action film, but it isn't exactly the post-Cold War thriller it wants to be.

If I judged it on action movie terms, it is too slow-paced and has unnecessary character details. If I judged it as a spy thriller, well, it has some plot holes that are just awkward, and the movie has a real dilemma because it has at least one scene where an actual atrocity is committed by the Pierce Brosnan character (who we're supposed to sort of like, I guess) in order to shame his former protégé-turned-assailant about his inhumanity. He slices an innocent young lady's leg, after having held a gun on her.

Let that sink in: This movie has a female character who exists just so that the main character can brutalize her to prove a point in a very dumb way to another male character, because...

Uh, no movie. I will not play along with that. There is no "why" other than convenience.  We are never told what happens with her by the way--spoiler alert! Because technically, why should we care what happens to her so long as the lesson is learned!

I don't want to give away too much of the twists. Brosnan is good, he always is, here in a kind of "past-it and jaded, being a spy was never like "Bond" anyway", sort of way. Bill Smitrovich is impressive, and his character is not a good one. But he still owned it.

The acting is not any of the problem here. It's the story and the framing.

 Some of what happens makes no logical sense--and I have to be snotty--really? The movie has one of those awful "dude walking away from exploding car" cliché scenes--yawn. Car chases and the necessary accidents exist in a world where, apparently, cops and emergency vehicles don't.  Surveillance drones just fling about over major cities like no one would notice. Women seem to exist to be victims. Cats walk through walls. Being suspected of being semi-traitorous does not get you at least a suspension from a managerial position at a spy agency (well, I presume that shouldn't be true...). People just punch up intimate data about other people via a password over their phones or laptops (I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's bordering Snowden territory--way-too-easy.) The machina is all too deus-like for my taste.

This is a movie I'd have appreciated as a Netflix find for having some psychological drama and good acting, but on the whole, as a first-run viewing, it isn't great. Interesting and watchable--but not great.

Thor: The Dark World. A Review

I have to give it up to the people who are masterminding the order of these Marvel franchise films--they get the comics, they get movies, they've done brilliant casting, and they've managed to make me a raging fangirl, which, admittedly, isn't impossible. But let me just express my feels about Thor: The Dark World a minute before I make some minor admissions and give away a secret that isn't one--

Okay, the elves are kind of stereotypical elves aren't they? I mean, Peter Jackson and them made elves that aren't those kind of elves for the LOTR series, but the elves in T:TDW are more of those Moorcockian/Hellboy 2 kind of elves, a bit, no? With their pseudo-latinate tongue (well, maybe that's a bit Tolkein) and the being weirdly all about elves and fuck everybody else? Yeah. Also, the movie is kind of wasting Christopher Eccleston a bit. Not like GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra kind of wasting of an actor, by simply not being a very good movie, but in the more general "isn't he mostly buried in latex and speaking elvish?" sort of way.

Also, while I like Natalie Portman and I think the two movies she been in have really made Jane Foster a pretty kick-ass smart and vital character, is it just me or does her chemistry with Chris Hemsworth's Thor never seem quite on?  I don't know why it doesn't work for me. It's like an intangible thing. Maybe I'm just projecting my feeling that their long-distance romance is always tinged with a bit of doom.

But you know what I love, right? Exactly. I love the relationship between the heroic, noble, awfully good Thor, and his seriously messed-up little bro, Loki.  The chemistry between Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston as the sniping and fighting brothers who reluctantly team up to avenge their mother (Rene Russo's) death, remove the Aether (an interdimensional MacGuffin that is attracting unwanted Elvish attention) from Jane Foster before she dies from all the bad energy, and probably save the 9 realms.  That works and is worth the price of admission.

After catching Thor 2 Saturday, I rewatched the original and realized the evolution of Loki as a character. He was not quite as compelling as simply the angry young man Loki Silvertongue of the first movie, who discovered that his whole life was a bit of a lie, and that not only was he not Odinson, he was not even really an Asgardian, but a frost giant, and not even a regular frost giant, but an abandoned and unwanted runt that was left to die. The Loki who fell through space at the end of Thor 1 into the Avengers movie became a cocky badass, but here, captive, he continues to work out his pathologies, transforming the illusion his life was into becoming a master of illusions. He fronts that he simply does not understand why everyone is so angry at him. The reality is that he's a wrecked personality doing awful things on purpose. He isn't self-destuctive--he isn't capable of remorse. He just survives and schemes. He isn't good or even necessarily well-intentioned--but he can be likeable for minutes at a time. He's more developed than your average psychopath. (Or maybe I am an unrelenting Hiddleston fangirl. Also a possibility.)

I couldn't not like this one, myself. I recommed it if you've been enjoying the Marvel universe unfolding cinamtically before you of late--like I surely have. Also, saw the trailer from "Days of Future Past" and now I am so having to see that. I love that these movies borrow so much from the comics, but work so well in 3 dimensions.

Do You Like Vampires and Movies? Kim Newman has Somethin' for ya.

I'm going to preface this by saying it does help a little if you are already a reader of Kim Newman's awesome takes on the supernatural, vampires, and alternate history through his other "Anno Dracula" tales and maybe his Diogenes Club stories as well (You guys! What I'm technically saying is you might like everything he writes!) But if you like movies and tv, and genre fiction--if you like subtle name-dropping and pastiche, if you like fast-paced stories and a developed fictional alternate history--and if you reaaaalllly dig vampires?

Oh, baby--this is for you. Because Newman covers the last quarter of the 20th century Hollywood style with some fangs for the memories, looking back through a cinematic lens while developing a story that will entertain as it chills. In it, the young get of Dracula slogs his way from the slums of Transylvania to the Hollywood stars, and there's no stopping him--or is there?

Well, you just have to read to see, and maybe you, too, will be aware of "the horror". I don't want to give away too much of the episodic doings that bring together characters from Anno Dracula novels past and some of the fixtures of moviedom's firmament, but it's good old fashioned disturbing social satire and art crit fun.

Review: Neptune's Brood

I've been terribly lax about reviewing things, anymore. I set up "Strangely Random Stuff" in part to separate my review posts from my political posts, but then I sort of failed to hold up my reviewing end. I think the problem is that I tend to be a more enthusiastic reviewer than a slagger; I like pasing on that I found a movie or a book or a product to be really good, as a service to the consumer, while finding that slagging a work I find substandard has a gratuitous feel to it.

If you have any sense of my personality, this insight probably doesn't synch. It strikes me as a weird quirk, as well.

That said, I read Stross' Neptune's Brood about a month ago, and was only jogged into remembering to write a review when I came across PZ Myers' review of the same.  Myers, naturally, was taken with the image of a communist squid-folk society.

I can't say I blame him. I am down with the squid, myself, and an oceanic socialism. I am likewise down with Stross. And I didn't dislike the book at all--oh no. There is naturally some slightly warped humor (is a piratical assurance agency Monty Python enough for you?) and the world-building framework of the Freyaverse, even a few generations down the line, makes sense. But I did find a bit of a peculiarity that I thought might be more something I would enjoy, and not necessarily everyone else:

You know how some works of sf go on about rocket ships and how the drives allegedly would work and maybe mention robots or some other tech in plausible detail to make you feel like "Oh yes. I see how that works." Well, Stross has dug a bit onto intergalactic finance and world-building economies. Space, if you hadn't heard, is big. And someone has to pay for going into it and doing things with bits of it. And the transactions occuring in an interstellar economy would be taking place over in some cases enormous distances and lengths of time that would even be shocking to a very long-lived android.

I have to congratulate Stross for really writing a work that is mindcandy for econowonks. I thought it was fun and fascinating and maybe a bit better than Saturn's Children, in the sense that I wasn't comparing it to Heinlein's Friday the whole time. It is quite different, and I rather liked it. It's just a bit hard to review.

If you like sf with a heavy dose of economics, this is probably your kind of jawn.

The New Westerns--2 Guns and Last Stand

I had a long weekend coming, so I took off a couple days and saw a few movies, which always centers me, a little. I like movies. I like tv, or comics, or books, for that matter, but movies are like a treat. TV can be good or bad, at times--a show can have an episode that sucks in an otherwise worthy run. Books can suck with redeeming qualities, or be awesome, with reservations. Comics are comics, and I just enjoy them for what they are--a complicated medium.

But movies? To my mind, movies are a finished artwork. When a movie is committed to film, there it is. It tells its story well or poorly. The actors do a job, or they don't. The director makes the story real, or it doesn't come off well. If a movie isn't doing it for me after like, twenty minutes,  I guess it isn't good.  It should give me something to make me bother with it. It should give me a reason to want to see it. This weekend, I saw two movies I rather liked and which I think had something similar going for them--

I think they are New Westerns. They aren't about the Old West. They are about that terrain, but a new reality. The first I caught was a Netflix find: The Last Stand, with Arnold Schwarzenegger. 

I don't have to care for Arnold's politics to like action movies in general, or with him in them. And damn it, I do. This is kind of the story of the honest lawman who sees bringing bad guys to justice as his job, whatever the cost. He assembles a posse, which includes the western trope of a drunk sharp shooter in jail and has certain other touches that kind of feel borrowed from westerns. It is not without comedy. The way of the gun is of course, fetishized, but not unrealistically. A young gun is martyred. There is a kind of mythic unreality about parts of it (a race car that does not seem to need fuel--a bad guy who does not seem to understand his 160 lb ass will be pounded by one someone like A Schwarzenegger, old enough to be his daddy or not.) I don't recall how this one did in the theatres, but since it's a 2013 movie I already got on Netflix, I kind of want to recommend it to see it get a new post-theatre life, because it was a good action flick.  

I also want to give a little prop for 2 Guns. 

This is a more intentionally comedic action film, but it also takes place in the American SW and has elements of the Western genre. Both the Denzel Washington and the Mark Wahlberg characters are isolated from their "tribes" and find an uneasy association with one another. Their mutual language is the Way of the Gun, a cowboy Bushido. Their code is, ultimately, independent and outlaw, because they find that the the arbiters of the codes by which they had lived was false. So they make their own way.  And of course, I love the fuck out of both these actors, seriously. 

In both, there are false women and violence is seen as a solution. They aren't great feminist works, if you know what I mean? But they are excellent action movies, and entertaining--although 2 Guns has this scene with chickens I thought was a bit intense. I like chickens. I like eating them, too, but I don't like them, like, being hurt. So, what I'm saying is, there is a scene if you like chickens you won't like, but if you are okay with violence against humans, this is your kind of movie, for sure!

Also, this weekend I saw Red2. I think this is the only non-stupid movie out of three that have featured Bruce Willis this year. It isn't really a New Western, though. But I sure as hell liked it better than freaking Die Harder than A Very Hard Thing.   But based on a Warren Ellis character, so duh--redeeming fun features. Yay, if you like spy sorts of things. I do. Little bit gratuitously violent, but if you haven't noticed I like action flicks with violence by now, I can't help sort you out any. It has violence. 

Netlix Finds: I Recommend "Act of Vengeance"

I found this to be a compelling movie with a stellar cast and a gripping plot. Imagine a man was determined to be an infamous terrorist, and was to be transported abroad as such--but there is this burning question--is he?  Really?

I found this movie to be well-acted and exceptional on many levels. It directly addresses how we in the West treat suspects of Islamic terrorism, while drawing a line between the Islamist terrorists and law-abiding and deeply spiritual practitioners of the faith. I think this is definitely a movie one should put in their Netflix queue.

George Bush--If only he found painting a little sooner...

At my other blog, I would go into how much I don't like the administration of GWB and what a miserable, incalculable, wretched load of damage he'd done to the state of the economy, American prestige, our foreign policy, how he made a hash of the War on Terror and the dreadful Iraq war and all of that--

Yet, as a person who isn't completely insensitive to art, I will say there is something specifically appealing, if still crude, regarding his style and choice of compostion as a painter. There are definitely issues of perspective, line, and detail that take a long time to really master and which he has some consistency problems with--but his dogs do have personality. Following through to the Gawker link, there are certain things he picks up visually, like the light reflecting the smooth roundness of grapes, or the play of colors in landscape paintings, that show an aptitude that might have really taken off if nurtured sooner.

And, you know, he might have been able to avoid politics, altogether. It has been suggested that he could command quite a bit for his canvasses on the strength of his name alone. If the proceeds went to, say, Katrina victims, or war refugees, one would not think that out of line at all.

Skyfall: As Bond as A Very Bond Thing

I had the opportunity to luxuriate in a movie theater and decided that since I hadn't seen any but a bootleg of the first Twilight movie, I'd be totally at sea with Breaking Dawn 2,  so I and the hubs invested in a movie franchise we had a much greater investment in--the latest Bond.

It actually was, as far as being a Bond picture, something different, familiar, and awfully good. I didn't grow up with much of a feel for Bond qua Bond--as such, the movies were action flicks that mostly seemed instantly-dated--my youth was spent in the Moore-Dalton period, and I did look forward to the Pierce Brosnan incarnation if only because I was a fan of Remington Steele  tv show, and kind of thought he'd be a good Bond.

Brosnan was a great Thomas Crowne. He was a better than average Bond.

Craig is Bond I think even more than Connery was Bond. In his three outings, we've actually seen him age into the character, and in this film, his "James" is facing his mortality, as well as the mortality of his era of spycraft. We are invited to watch his "death" as the result of a not-very clean shot by his associate at the order of M, and the credit sequence with theme by Adele (one of my favorite current artists, no less!) is super-typical--the quintessence of Bondy-coolness:


The story is about Bond's attempt to resurrect himself in service of his country, even if he has, in the words of his superior, Mallory (Ralph Fiennes), "lost a step", and his loyalty to M (Judi Dench) is challenged as he finds himself risking his life to protect her against the madman and computer mastermind former agent Silva (Javier Bardem) who has a very personal vandetta against M as all she loves.

I don't want to ruin the twists, although other reviews very well might.  What I will say is that the character of M in Dame Judi Dench's hands is completely humanized in a way she wasn't in previous films. Also, as witnessed in No Country for Old Men,  Javier Bardem has no discomfort embodying a truly creepy villain--in all honesty, although I've seen this comparison elsewhere, I have to give it a Heath Ledger's Joker-like prop for being riveting. You wonder what he will do next. He can't not be watched, and he's difficult to watch.

The movie's arc takes Bond from his death in the initial sequence, to the place where he grew up--Skyfall, the Scottish estate of the Bond family where James lived until shortly after he was orphaned and then, shortly after, recruited, presumably by M, herself. There are themes of the cthonic, the subterranean, and the image of M as a "mother". There might be a question of whether Bond's easy love'm and leave'm sexuality is about abandonment issues, or maybe whether he loves country more than he could really love anyone in a conflicted way--that service is his sense of permanence.

There's a notion that the villain, Silva, is a kind of bad homosexual stereotype because there is a definite flamboyance and sexual come-on to Bond in his threats toward him. I'm conflicted.  Silva is above all an obsessive. If he was ever vain, he's disfigured, so he might be over-compensating. Having been technically exiled by his "death" he can create his own reality and push whatever limits he likes--does that include his sexuality? He used Severine. Is he--bi? (Vixen sucks teeth in surprise and goes, "Oh, wait?)  When he suggests he might use Bond sexually because they are so much alike, and Bond wonders why he's assuming this would be his first time, I'm actually more intrigued by what this tells us about Bond-- in either case, I think the threat of rape is a way for Silva to test Bond's limits and his reply is a way for Bond to explain he can deal with that (in Casino Royale, although he wasn't raped, he took one unholy fuck of a testicular beating.) If the homosexual overtones alarm anyone, it might help to note they resolve things over a nice glass of aged scotch on the head of a tortured girl used as the target in a William Tell shooting match.  (No one technically wins. She loses.)

Yes, there still is a bit of misogyny in the old franchise, although M and Eve (Bond's erstwhile partner) are well acquitted. I don't want to give anything away. We'll see more of Eve and Ralph Fienne's Mallory (I hope they keep Fiennes on)  and I like the young incarnation of Q--more down to earth and less outre ( guns and radios--not exploding pens--although he's supposedly a computer genius, I think he might have done something dumb while encrypting Silva's somethingorother map.  Just saying. But Oh well.)

Anyhow, there was a kind of continuity and reboot feel with this movie. It had lots of Bond traditions (an Astin-Martin?) and seemed to take us more intimately into who Bond is and how he got this way.

I enjoyed it and see it a good sign there's still life in the old spy yet.

Iron Abbey--if you are in/visiting the SE PA area.

I like to review good restaurants every now and again, just the way I review movies and books--you'll mostly get really good reviews from me, because I'm interested in pointing people to something good I've found. A place would have to be super-awful for me to give it an Internet-thrashing. So I want you to know: Iron Abbey is one of my favorite restaurants in the world. I am giving it a serious recommend.

Take my lunch experience today as part of the reason I love this place: they are a gastropub, which means the emphasis is on good food, but they have a beer list that is really comparable to Monk's Cafe in Center City (which is really damn good). So you really can't go wrong if you like some good food and some seriously great beer.

Me and the spouse started with the Mezze Platter as our appetizer, which is a generous spread of roasted peppers, prosciutto, salami, cheese, some absolutely fabulous fried green olives with blue cheese, hummus, pita, onions, water crackers, and....sheer deliciousness. The hummus was chickpea heaven. The manchego and Parmesan cheeses were good quality, as were the prosciutto and salami--this is a thing I look for in a proper anti-pasto: quality. It was a generous portion for two; my husband remarked that we really could have eaten just that and made a good lunch, and I have to say, we are both what you would call "good eaters". When a spread like this is accompanied with great beers like Fegley's Brew Works Mad Elf Reserve, which is a Holiday Ale with some really good use of "noggy" spice flavors and a heady, malty profile, or Southern Tiers' Unearthly IPA, which is a smooth, hoppy, crisp, brew of incredible drinkability for it's crazy-strong 10% ABV (that was what I was having--I am a sucker for IPA's--a total hop-head) you have a wonderful experience.

Then I had an awesome Blue Abbey burger--which won me over with conforming to some of my hard and fast burger requirements:

Good bread.

Actually cooked well-done when I said well-done.

Crispy, not chewy, bacon.

Cheese used as a flavor--not a cover (I hate when condiments smother!)

And the fries that accompanied it were flavorful and crisp, of the regular size (not steak or shoe string, but the in-between) and starch-bathed for crispness variety. They were a total "yum". I "boxed" half of the burger and most of the fries for a re-heated snack later. I also enjoyed, as my second beer, Port Brewing Company's Old Viscosity. This is a high-test Imperial Stout with strong flavor and a syrupy mouth-feel (Viscosity--indeed!) It's not a bad beer to have a dessert with--and I opted for flan. I'm a flan fan. The smooth, but rich and alcoholic flavor of the beer went really well with the caramel-custard of the flan. It was a major mouth-happy.

My spouse had the chili, which was pleasantly meaty and also quite flavorful. Because the Mad Elf was a strong beer, and he was the designated chauffeur, he declined a second beer. But I'm serious, when it comes to choosing beers at Iron Abbey--you could seriously make a day of it if you had someone else driving. There is plenty of novelty and truly tasty-sounding selections to be had if you are a beer hound--and I totally am! And even if your love of beer is just a wee thing, you will still enjoy the food: good portions, properly cooked, with great attention to the quality of ingredients. I definitely give them my seal of approval.

(And the service is always top-notch--another plus! And they are knowledgable more often than not about the beers they have, which is great if you aren't used to such a bodacious beer-menu.)

Just saw "Red"--liked the heck out of it.

Okay, this was one movie I had to see right away because of the cast: Bruce Willis? John Malkovich. Morgan freaking Freeman....and Dame Helen Mirren? Mary Louise Parker and Karl Urban, who I last saw totally "being" Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy in Star Trek? In a spy movie based on a Warren Ellis graphic novel with the promise of things exploding and witty banter? It has Ernest Borgnine in it? Ernest Borgnine is still alive? (And he looks great! Yay, Ernest Borgnine!) And Richard Dreyfuss!

I was so very, very in. Looked quirky, action-y but fun.

And it was!

Willis plays Frank Moses, a retired CIA Black Ops superman who is so lonely he tears up his pension checks to have an excuse to call up Sarah Ross, a pensions bureau customer service cube-rat who is bored with her life, cynical about romance, and yet reads goofy awful romance/thriller novels. (I identified with this character just a little.) His life is depicted as being terribly normal, ensconced in a nice little not terribly fancy suburban home on a nice little suburban block, who pads downstairs one fateful night to have a wet works unit try to ammo the living hell out of him.

When he handles this in a "been there, done that" fashion, dispatching the first squad of "baddies" with smooth ruthlessness, and drawing in the assumed back-up team by "cooking off" some ammo on a skillet to simulate a firefight--all to kill their asses, whilst walking out with his reserve ID in a briefcase he had carefully set aside against the day?

It takes about ten minutes to recognize that whoever is after Frank Moses is about to catch hell. But then there's that matter of the girl he's been calling--

He totally doesn't want her to get caught up in his business. So he kidnaps her.


That bit was a little rough. But it laid out that this movie wasn't about survival, and it wasn't really about revenge, although those things fit in. I consider this kind of a romance. And it's also kind of about how do people navigate in a world that declares them outmoded? That might reject people of great skill for being "too old"? Where lovers make hard life and death decisions, where people really do embrace mayhem constructive, and where young snots seem to discount what the seasoned professional can do in his sleep? This movie is witty, pretty, has explosions and lots of gun play, but it also seems to say stuff.

There's a scene where Frank Moses wails on William Cooper (The Karl Urban character, whose mission is to kill Frank Moses). It seemed kind of like a fantasy-fulfillment: The old guy showing an upstart how it was really done. A lot of the movie is about how people can do surprising things. Helen Mirren is amazing as Victoria, a very feminine, petite, and cold-blooded highly trained assassin. Her character's romance/intrigue with Ivan Simanov (Brian Cox), a Russian, um, diplomat, unfolds in the background of the movie. And that is a story good enough to be a story on its own, too.

And then there's Morgan Freeman, as Joe Matheson, kind of the elder, the voice of wisdom--a seniors- home resident with late-stage cancer who is not interested in going gently into that good night. Being introduced to his last battle, he's ready to fight!

And then there's John Malkovich, as Marvin Boggs, a guy who was deep in "Men who Stare at Goats" or even MK-Ultra territory, who was dosed with LSD on a regular basis for 11 years and as such, is more than a little traumatised. His role is comic because of his oddness, but also tragic. You see a deadly competent professional who has paid with his mind.

I liked the heck out of this movie. The plot leads up to the question of just who is powerful enough to order hits against citizens--which might be a Macguffin for the plot of this movie, but isn't an unreasonable question altogether. Are Vice-Presidents or war-profiteers special people who get away with more? The movie just presents this idea of who the bad guy might be so innocently.

I hope it sinks in and spins around some brain-pans.

But long-story, short? Loved it. Fun. And I like Bruce Willis in things, unless they are Hudson Hawk, which I never could convince myself to like or even watch all the way through. Or Unbreakable, which is an M Night Shamalyan joint and I only watched one of them in theatre all the way through and didn't entirely like it even though by rights I should have thought it was teh awesomes. I think it's the bald head. I have a fetish. Him. Jason Statham. My hubboo, all sporting the Daddy Warbucks look. I dig the smooth. My fetish might go back to envisioning the full monty Sean Connery when I was a wee lass. A look he should have rocked straightaway. Like Patrick Stewart. Mmmmm. Patrick Stewart. But Willis is funny and physical and romantic in this ("gooey", even).

I thought it was a fun one. I recommend it.

"The Expendables"--oh my, my, oh hell yes!

I'd been looking forward to this one from the first moment I caught a glimpse of the movie poster--Stallone, Li, Statham, Willis, Lundgren....

I thought I died and went to action-movie heaven. The promise of a movie that also squeezes in Schwartzenegger, Roarke, Eric Roberts as a bad, bad man, and Randy Couture, Steve Austin, and Terry Crews, and oh by the way, also has kickboxing's awesome Gary Daniels (not a big enough part) and Charisma Carpenter who I adored on Angel (I have unresolved feelings about how her character got handled, is all....)

It's like Christmas! (Um, that's actually the Jason Statham character's name. Although Stallone's "Barney Ross" is a normal enough name, we have Randy Couture as "Toll Road", Mickey Roarke as "Tool", Jet Li, somewhat awfully as "Ying Yang", and Terry Crews as "Hale Caesar"....yeah. These aren't names, they're wrestling handles. Although Randy Couture wins by having such a great name in real life. It's what I would totally name a lingerie store, if I were gonna start one.) There is no way in the universe that such a movie could ever suck with so many awesome people in it, I found myself thinking. In fact, even if it was brainless action nonsense, I would love that it was the quintessence of the genre of brainless action nonsense. More, bigger, faster, things exploding, muscles pumping, dialogue getting chewed up and spit out like a used, whatever those gun cartridge-thingies are called.

And then I saw it, and it was actually good.

Now, by "good", you could be thinking all kinds of things; it was a good action movie. It was a meta-action-movie, also. We begin with a vision of how the "expendable" team works as they bloodily handle a hostage situation involving pirates. It's there that we learn, by way of terse dialogue and loads of action, who the team is and what the character's specialities are. Ross is the leader. Christmas the cocky one with the blades, and Lundgren's Gunnar is a bit of a head-case. But it isn't until the most meta scene in a church where Bruce Willis (or, "Mr. Church") offers a mission in a South American fictional place to Ross's team, or to his rival Trench (fun cameo by Arnold) that the movie is really "set". The Schwartzenegger character immediately thinks the job smells like bad news and exits, and this leaves Ross ready to take up an ugly job with his band of mercenaries.

I'm going to elide over all the plot-bits. You can go watch the movie if you want to know about them. The things I want to point out are that there are some pretty good scenes by Roberts and especially Mickey Roarke. There's this one scene where the camera just focuses on that beat-up face as he goes on about how a life of violence makes you lose your soul--that was deep. Also, a scene I found provocative was where the courageous and dissident daughter of the General of the country where the Expendables are charged with wreaking their havoc is water boarded by the bad guys. To me, this was almost like a statement that this is the kind of thing bad guys do. I don't know if because of my biases I read more into it than was there.

Things blow up, massive quantities of ammo gets used, males bond over smoking, drinking, and getting inked, women are rescued from bad men and there are some pretty righteous fight scenes. Dolph Lundgren and Jet Li get into it in a scene that demonstrates why size isn't always an advantage, and thankfully, there are two good fight scenes with Steve Austin--one with Stallone, which was pretty good, and the one I was waiting for, with Randy Couture, that had some awesomeness but unfortunately, probably because of the tight timing of the movie, couldn't have been longer. That was the match-up I'd have wanted to see more of, just as a long-time wrestling fan.

Anyway, although the violence is ridiculous, the plot could be seen as contrived, and the characters for the most part remain sketchy--I think for your summer action movie dollar, you're really getting bang for your buck. There's some good jokes and if you like machismo or just watching muscle-y guys shoot and/or blow up stuff, which is apparently a fetish I have, you'll enjoy the hell out of this. I sure did.


Although I will say, I sat through a half-hour of adverts before the movie, which almost put me in the wrong mood. Hey--cinema-people! I am not interested in buying a phone or having a Coke. By all means show me previews of similar movies to insure I come back for another motion picture, but don't subject me to such a downer of adverts that I am almost too irked to like the movie once it starts--

Grr! I brought in outside drinks, fools. I wish I brought candy, too! Think about that next time you want to rob me of my experience; I will not eat your nachos, no! Those overpriced nachos are being paid for with what? Cell-phone ads? Adverts for HBO shows that aren't even the demographic of the movie I came to see?

What? I'm sharing my outside candy, too. I'm going to pass out M&M's. And you won't stop me.

No, I kid. I don't share candy. That was just me with my testosterone up from this kick-ass action movie....

The answer to a long, hot summer? Read something chilling!

I'm like anyone else who likes to go on vacation, get out in the sun a bit, and try and have a relaxing time--but the problem with me is, I never relax. I like a bit of stress and discomfort to keep my alcohol-thinned blood pulsating through my cholesterol-thickened arteries. That's why, instead of choosing romances and such for my lighter summer reading, I like to read books with monsters and vampires and the odd Apocalypse, and things like that. After all, most romance novels are far too unbelievable. I've gotten part of my summer-reading done this week, and I'd like to share my "recommends". (I'm listing them in the order I got them, not necessarily in any sort of ratings-system. )

The first I'm recommending is Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, by Seth Grahame-Smith, who is listed on the book cover as "New York Times Bestselling Author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies." Although I know that book exists, I haven't picked it up yet, not being all that big on Jane Austen or zombies. Well, that's not entirely true. I liked what little of Northanger Abbey I read and generally approve of costume drama films, and I do like mindless dumb zombie movies of the "They get nourishment from the noorons of the human brain" type. The mash-up just didn't appeal to me on the right level, though, in quite the way that the idea of Honest Abe as a Slayer does.

(I will say, though, that I liked Grahame-Smith's writing at Huffington Post. His snark about McCain/Palin was pretty right on.)

The conceit of this book is that a secret journal reveals the sixteenth president's deep, dark secret: due to the death of his own mother, and a few other harrowing events, at the hands of vampires, the young Abe became a hardened warrior in the struggle to free America from their undead, greedy fingers. It's written in the same slightly gilded language we're accustomed to from Civil War documentaries, and props have to be given to Stephanie Isaacson, who is listed in the Acknowledgements for creating the creepy Photoshopped images that might just start to make the reader wonder if antebellum vampires aren't just a bit plausible. (I'd totally like to see someone make a movie of this in a Ken Burns style, actually.)

If you like history, and the kind of vampires that expressly aren't sparkly, this is pretty neat. The way the thirst and demands of vampires tie in with the other reasons for the Civil War are kind of ingenious as well as the way Grahame-Smith weaves them into Lincoln's real biographical details. It's fun, but makes you go, "Hmm."


Next up is China Mieville's Kraken. At five hundred-something pages, it's not exactly a "light read", but it is a brilliantly accessible story--something of a "shaggy squid" tale. We are presented with a crime scene: someone has David Blaine'd a massive dead Architeuthis Dux right out from the display case at the natural History Museum, and it seems quite possible that some outre cultists of the tentacular deep old ones are looking to immanentize the eschaton with it.

No, really. From the imagination of Mieville, with his great dialogue, smart details, and truly weird turns--this is actually a fun story about the trip a few regular people end up making through a sidereal London that is full of truly side streets and out of the out of the way places, knacky bastards whose B&E's might involve OOBE's or even tesseracts, and streetlights that actually do sometimes beat fatalistic warnings, and my own favorite side-story, the idea of familiars being organized, and even striking. (It's a lot to take in, and probably worth a few reads--it makes me wonder if he isn't planning on revisiting this world with another shaggy shoggoth tale.)

Oh, and lots of apocalyptic death-cultists of various stripes. Can't forget them.

It's a weird combination of fantasy that doesn't rely as much on Lovecraft et als as one might think, and crime drama, complete with hard-boiled cops who have even seen this sort of thing before. Sort of.



(Side note: I am a fan of squid myself. It's not really a sure thing why, but I kind of understand a squid cult. It's hard to make out what the squid pro quo is in worshiping the coming of an ubersquid. That he eats you last? First? Tooling about the Internet, I found a picture and story about the actual Archie. I link this because it provides detail for imagining a squid of immense size being broken out of a water-tight really big tank, and because the details of the preservation of such a specimen are really cool.)


Last but not least, there's Charles Stross' The Fuller Memorandum; A Laundry Files Novel. I think it might maybe be useful if you've already read The Atrocity Archives and The Jennifer Morgue, but it isn't obligatory. It's just that my introduction to Stross' work was On Her Majesty's Occult Service via SFBC, and I fell madly in love with the universe he's created of a world where the works of Turing and Crowley are equally valid, and where the hypotheticals of Lovecraft's fiction unfold in Reimannian space, told in a way that is very amusing and has really interesting side jokes about technology. And I'd be madly in love with the protagonist: hacker, slacker, technomagus and secret agent Bob Howard, if I wasn't afraid of his significant other, Dr. Dominique O'Brien (who doesn't have to be in my dimension or even real to probably kick my ass or play her scary violin at me.)

The tale involves more potential immanentizing of echatons and the temporary disappearance of the "Laundry's" (the UK secret paranormal spooks') head spook in charge--Angleton, who is possibly weirder and older than we've been given to suppose before. If you're computer savvy and know a little high magick, this shit is funny as all heck. Even if you don't, it's a good tale. I recommend it a lot.

I saw M. Night Shamalayan's "The Last Airbender" this past Saturday.

It wasn't the worst movie I've ever seen. I'd actually say I found it a little easier to watch than Highlander: The Source, which I couldn't even bring myself to hate the way I hated, say Big Momma's House 2 or In the Name of the King, which were movies of pure technical incompetence and carelessness and were bad in every which way. (And I had hopes for In the Name of the King because I know many of those actors are better than that movie--but oh, what a bad miscarriage of a movie it was.)

I am a softy. I give points for trying.

It took me a couple of days to figure out what was missing or could be done better. Other people have definitely written savage reviews and reviews that trashed different aspects--I would say, and this surprises me in no way, the best savage review I read was at Io9. I didn't really want to go that route with the review--but here's what I think:

Not even midway through the movie, I found myself wondering what other directors would have done with the material. This is a bad sign. (But Shamalyan is not one of my faves. I don't know why. He just tries to do this "Hey, I surprised the audience with the thing I did" twist in his movies which is...dumb. Okay. I pulled your finger the first time, Uncle Clever. Now entertain me.) I re imagined it as a Del Toro film--darker, more adult, more fantastic (rewritten, better dialogue) and as a Spielberg film (entertaining and well-crafted with characters who were juveniles, but not juvenilely treated.) Also, I thought about how I would have gone about doing it differently.

I would have started with Aang, not with Katara and her brother discovering him under the ice. Why not start with a little back story--shown, not told? This way, when Aang finds that his home was destroyed by the Firebenders, we already pre-emptively have an emotional connection with them? There's just no reason not to know that Aang ran away from the responsibility of being the Avatar right away. Starting with the back story would make the rest of the story cohere better. The flashbacks show that he had a mentor that was like a father--more of that would have been great! Show him being a kid so we can sympathize with how a youth has this thing thrust upon him.

Then we could start understanding him as a character with an arc, as the pretentious people who care about such things say.

Now, I never saw the animated series, so I'm at a loss for how faithful the movie is to the series. The hints that Katara and Aang are going to bond later along the lines of Anakin and Padme creep me out a little because--they do. I don't know if that's something built-in or what, of if I'm just misreading the heck out of that. But I will say the dialogue is at least as bad as Lucas. I so agree with Charlie Anders--Aasif Mandvi does look a little like he's too aware that what his character is saying is sooo stock-villian-y. But he's still one of the people who is fun to watch in this movie. As are Dev Patel and Shaun Toub--their motivation seems more concrete.

As for goofy melodramatic things like: "We need to show them that we believe in our beliefs as much as they believe in their beliefs." which Katara really does say--the stupidity is, it has so little to do with belief at this point. The Fire folks believe the other 'Benders should be ruled by them or wiped out, and the other people just pretty much believe they should neither be ruled by Fire folks or wiped out. It's not all that heavily ideological so much as existential. I think the real melodramatic bullshit line was when Aang is meditating in the sacred area of the Northern Water tribe and communing with the yin-yang fish, and might as well have a "Do Not Disturb" sign on his head, when Katara offers the weirdly wrong-sounding encouragement that she "always knew" he was the Avatar.

Always knew? Since when? Like, since her grandmom told her earlier in the movie, when it seemed a little like the youngin's had no idea about the Avatar? Or like, since it was kind of obvious that he was the Avatar--why bother saying that? Was it doubtful? Is he supposedly meditating because he doesn't know people think that and are rooting for him to spiritually kick ass? Or was it more like Katara is not speaking as a character (who would have motivations, a personality, and a story) but as an embodiment of the hopes of all the oppressed people depending upon the Avatar?

If the latter--boo. She's Katara. If she has to speak for anybody, let her speak for herself. Develop the character.

The movie was big-budget but clocks in under two hours. I think with attention to the story and character development, the movie could have been a little longer and cost the same but been qualitatively better. More showing, less telling. More confrontation, less narrative. There were good ideas that were explored, like Aang learning to accept the consequences of not accepting his destiny, or the idea that Princess Yue sacrifices herself for the greater good because it gives her purpose--these things shouldn't be rushed or piled in.

I dunno. I see a lot of promise in the material, but just don't think it was made into a good-enough movie. And I won't necessarily knock against the young actors in it, because I can't separate their performances from what they were performing in.

The movie was entirely set up for a sequel. Even though I was lukewarm about this, I would probably watch the sequel, anyway, on the off-chance that lessons would be learned.

I give points, as I said, for trying.

Product review--Wet n Wild's Natural Blend Pressed Powder

I picked up some of this product the other day because this is the time of year that my skin starts turning another color. In winter, I'm pale, Goth-y, a bit pinkish, but as soon as sun-rays kiss my nekkid flesh, I develop this golden toasty hue. And that means I need new foundation. And Wet n Wild is, well, affordable. It's a good drugstore brand of cosmetic.

But what I wanted to point out was the packaging, which really surprised me with what a neat, recyclable design it has. Most pressed powders are pretty wasteful as far as packaging goes--the powder itself is pressed into a small tin pan that sits in a womb of petroleum-based plastic, destined for a landfill after about three months, which just won't biodegrade. But the Wet n Wild compact is actually made of cardboard, so practically all of the components--the cardboard (recycled paper-based!) compact, the glass mirror, and the tin pan part that the powder sits in, are all separately recyclable. So the powder provides the light coverage I want to banish the "shinies" with (using natural ingredients like mica, corn starch, and kaolin clay) and I don't feel guilty when I finally use it up and toss my compact in the recycle bin.

I totally want other companies to follow this kind of thoughtful design. I'd like to see more all-metal lipstick tubes. I'm not sure if there is anyway to make one of my favorite cosmetic products, the automatic eye-pencil (I hate sharpening!) more eco-friendly. But I'd like to see cosmetic companies try.