Signs Taken for Wonders

Seal Dance

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:08:14 GMT

It looks more like a sea lion to me, but whatev. I applaud its skillz.

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:22:29 GMT

Interesting nytimes article on Why Exercise Doesn't Necessarily Lead to Weight Loss

Paranormal Activity

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:51:42 GMT

It's official: I'm going to ICFA this year. My paper got accepted, so Orlando, here I come!

In other news, I just came back from seeing Paranormal Activity. As far as "docuterror" movies go, it's good, but a little too predictable.

Sometimes when you crit story drafts you come across stories that have been revised maybe one too many times: ambiguity has been ironed out of the draft, and the plot moves like a heavy, thudding machine. Reader questions are addressed in very clear terms before they can even be asked: "Here's why they don't leave the house! Here's why they don't call an exorcist!"

The movie felt like that to me, so I wasn't surprised to learn that the director had continued to reshoot the movie over the years and changed the festival ending based on some advice from Steven Spielberg. The final product shows the effort of heavy revision. It's very... workmanlike. It's designed to be scare the audience and for the most part it does (particularly in the very effective last scene). But there's not much that's fresh, or original, or ambitious here.

For that reason I prefer The Blair Witch Project. Plotwise, that film wasn't as well put together and its "scares" weren't as calculated as PA's are, but as a horror movie it scared me more. There was more messiness in Blair Witch, more left to the audiences' imagination, and as a result it stayed with me longer than I think this film will. To be scared by the final scene of Blair Witch you need to be *with* the film; you need to be putting clues together and you have to figure out what the final shot means *as you see it* for the scene to work. It's horror as moment of revelation. Watching PA, on the other hand, you don't have to use your imagination or put clues together: the film will practically beat you over the head with what's going on. As a result, more people will enjoy this movie than enjoyed Blair Witch, I think, but I consider BW to be the better horror movie.

To put it a different way: PA could well be the better movie, but BW is a better horror movie. Does that make sense?

We need to talk about your naming policy

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 03:09:23 GMT

Yoinked from my brother: Attack of the Triffids has flax farmers baffled

Somebody has contaminated Canada's flax crop with trace amounts of a genetically modified variety, whimsically called "Triffid" after a 1960s horror flick that starred a villainous breed of plants replete with legs, intelligence and a venom-filled stinger.

If you're going to genetically modify a crop, why, oh why, would you call it a "triffid?" That's like calling a spaceship Apollo 13 and expecting everything to work out okay.

Oh no you dee-int

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 15:06:14 GMT

Loads of entertainment news this weekend. Starting with the goodish news, I hear that after having weathered terrorism, the holy-shit religious-wacko-meltdown of the series' original lead, and the untimely death of the prequel's rumored star, Mad Max 4 is back on track.

In another blast from the past, there's the dubious news that Nickelodeon Has Acquired The "Ninja Turtles". Really, though, they couldn't screw up this series worse than the movies did. Go ninja, go ninja go!

In increasingly more dubious news, Dreamworks is planning a live action adaptation of "Ghost in the Shell. I *guess* this could work out well...

On a more WTF note, Gerard Butler, determined to win back America's love after the bellyflop of Gamer, is going to star in that most beloved of Shakespearean plays, Coriolanus. That will get those young kids back in the seats!

All sarcasm aside, I'm rather fond of Coriolanus, and Butler's casting indicates that the producers are adapting this misunderstood play with an eye to its untapped potential for Classical Beefcake Shirtlessness. Would that more Shakespearean films did the same.

And lastly, in news that's sure to appall me and about 5 other people in North America, David Fincher Will Turn the Famed British Miniseries "House of Cards" into a One Hour Drama. I fondly remember this mini-series as introducing my 12-yr-old self to the concepts of unreliable narration, the fourth wall, blackmail, twist endings, and sociopathic politicians, all of which have, in their own way, proved useful. So will the remake be any good? Will it be yet another sad American dismembering of a classic British series?

You might think that. You might very well think that, but of course, I couldn't possibly comment.

Quick reviews

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:56:28 GMT

Where the Wild Things Are looked beautiful. I liked the acting, the cinematography & the script. The pace seemed unnecessarily slow at times, but that may have been because I was starving and really wanted to get out of the theatre and grab some dinner.

I just finished reading In the Woods. It's a dark and unsettling book, so naturally, I really liked it.

The plot: three children vanish in Ireland in the 1980s. One is later recovered alive, clinging to a tree in the nearby woods, his shoes covered in blood. He claims to have no memory of what happened to his friends. Years later, the boy in question has grown into a troubled detective who finds himself working a child murder in the same vicinity as his own childhood trauma. Believing the two cases to be linked, the detective decides to keep his own role in the story secret from his colleagues and from the townspeople as he searches for answers.

Publisher's Weekly calls this a "psychological thriller," and I have to agree. This is really a story about how people think, about what they recognize and what they don't. It's also a good example of Todorov's Fantastic, in that there's a strong hint of the supernatural in the plot, but as it is filtered through the first-person perspective of an extremely damaged person, it's not clear whether the "truth" lies in the realms of the real or the unreal.

Entertainment News

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:38:08 GMT

Somehow I missed that there was an "Eagle Of the Ninth" movie filming. I remember being very fond of that YA novel. I was also pleased to hear that the always-in-development Tripods trilogy has a new script.

For those of you whose taste runs more to the musical, you might be interested to hear that there's a Miss Saigon movie in development.

Also, the Swedish film adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo has now got a US release. The book seems enormously popular, but I haven't read it yet. Any good?

Other projects that sound interesting: Ridley Scott is apparently going to remake the "Red Riding" miniseries for US audiences.

What struck me about this story wasn't so much the oh-god-here-we-go-again spectacle of American remakes of British tv, but the fact I somehow hadn't yet heard of this series: The original [Red Riding], which was based on a four novel series by David Peace, is a study of power and police corruption framed around the investigation of the disappearance of several young girls in a case based on the real life Yorkshire Ripper killings.

In the Netflix queue it goes.

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:19:45 GMT

Grim news in Guinea: In a Guinea Seized by Violence, Women Are Prey

Cellphone snapshots, ugly and hard to refute, are circulating here and feeding rage: they show that women were the particular targets of the Guinean soldiers who suppressed a political demonstration at a stadium here last week, with victims and witnesses describing rapes, beatings and acts of intentional humiliation.

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 13:27:25 GMT

This article mostly made me feel sad. It's very interesting, though: Sesame Street in Palestine

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 16:02:08 GMT

A good essay on anxious personalities, from the NY Times: Understanding the Anxious Mind

media watching update

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 15:58:46 GMT

Thanks to people like sapphohestia and the fabulous D. Elizabeth Wasden (CW alum and writer extraordinaire) I've had a chance to see some movies that are actually in the theatres. It's amazing.

The short version is this: I saw Jennifer's Body yesterday and really quite enjoyed it. It's definitely in the Ginger Snaps school of using horror movie tropes to talk about teenage girls and their gender issues, although it succeeds more at comedy than it does at horror. Beth and I had no expectations going in, so this film had no problems surpassing them. Anything else I have to say must be done under a spoiler lock -

Jennifer's Body is the 2nd movie produced from a script by the much-hyped Diablo Cody (Juno was the first.) I enjoyed the one-liners, but all the characters in this film sounded like characters from Juno, which made me wonder if Cody is a one-trick-pony.

Beth didn't like the fact that the central female characters in the film spent all their time fighting each other instead of joining up to defeat the patriarchy (read: the Satanic indie band that exploits & abuses Jennifer's body in the first place). I knew it was going to be about female competition going in, so I was less annoyed by that.

I am confused, though, by what the ultimate message of the film is (this would be a great W131 film, teachers).

Going all analytical for a minute: Jennifer gets metaphorically raped in the sacrifice scene, and her body returns possessed by a succubus demon (or Jennifer turns into a demon - this seemed unclear). She deals with her trauma by inflicting sexual violence on innocent men, (the rape imagery seemed to return in the killings, particularly with her "I need you hopeless! I need you scared!" lines.) Needy recognizes that Jennifer's newfound lust for power is unhealthy, but is drawn into competition with her. Eventually, Needy annihilates both Jennifer and (to some extent) herself in a parallel death scene. Then she becomes a demonic agent of violence herself, but one who at least directs her initial violence against Jennifer's murderers.

Hmm. So we have oppressed girls seeking power rather than justice. I'm not sure what to make of the Devil's kettle either; I liked that it wasn't supernatural. Is the message that the effects of violence will always be expressed somewhere, but maybe not in the direction you were expecting? No idea.

Speaking of Supernatual, I kept expecting the Winchester boys to show up. But more on that show in a different post.

- but I'd say it's fun, and worth checking out, particularly on DVD.

I preferred Jennifer's Body to the other two films I saw recently. 9 started strongly, but soon suffered from an acute case of Stupid. Personally, I hate it when producers of SF films interpret SF to mean "doesn't need to make sense," and this seems to have happened here. The story is (fairly) logical until about 3/4s of the way through, and then the Obvious (though Horrible) Solution to the Problem is disregarded in favor of WTF?, betraying the rules of the world in the process. In short, 9 is a beautiful film, sabotaged by its script.

I also saw the other SF "9" movie: District 9. I'd heard good things about it before going in, which may have raised my expectations; I was disappointed. The first 30 mins were intriguing, but the rest of the movie turns away from a mock-documentary interrogation of racism and Otherness into a more simplistic action movie.

That in itself might have been ok, had the script writer(s) also not decided to make the fairly ordinary protagonist do Reprehensible Things that killed my empathy for that character - and then continued as though I, the audience, still cared about this guy. I like anti-heroes, and I'm generally intrigued by explorations of the darker sides of human nature, but in this case I felt condescended to. To be blunt: I don't like films that assume that I and everyone else in the audience is racist, and will pull for the White Guy because of his skin color. And at the conclusion of this film, that's what I felt was going on.

I suppose I would have more respect for District 9-as-apartheid-parable if I hadn't also seen Blood Diamond. When Blood Diamond was released, critics had a problem with the saintliness of the Oppressed-African-trying-to-reunite-with-his-Son (played by Djimon Hounsou), saying that it seemed a bit much, particularly when played in contrast with the selfishness of the Racist South African Hero (played by Leonardo DiCaprio). "Why have the White Hero at all?" they asked. "He's much less compelling a protagonist than the Oppressed African. It seems obvious that the Oppressed African is the real hero, so why must the White Guy's pov dominate? And why not make the Oppressed African a bit more morally complex? Do you not trust us to root for this guy if he is anything less than a saint?"

Watching District 9, I was overcome by a sense of deja-vu. Again, the selfishness of the corrupt South African White Dude is coming between the Saintly Oppressed Black Guy (read: alien) and his son. At the end, White Dude sees the error of his ways and sacrifices himself so that Black Guy and son can be reunited & escape.

I was ok with this plot in Blood Diamond because it was the first time I'd seen it. But it irritated me in District 9.

It also just didn't work as well: in Blood Diamond, DiCaprio's character is a smuggler. He has no moral code, so none of the bad things he does are surprising, and they fit his character. When Wikus commits his Big Sin in District 9, knocking Christopher(?) to the ground and stealing his spaceship, it makes no fracking sense. He can't pilot a spaceship! He can't cure himself! He also has been portrayed throughout the film as a not-terribly-bright, bumbling bureaucrat who wants to believe he's doing the right thing, so the ruthlessness & violence of this action seems out of character. In short, WTF?

After that, there's no way this character can be redeemed. I therefore didn't like the final coda that implied Wikus was still alive in alien form. The film was treating me like I still cared about this character, and would be glad to know there was a chance he'd get a happy ending. I didn't, and I wasn't.

And then there's the treatment of the aliens. I did have a problem with the saintliness of Christopher's character (whereas I didn't have that problem in Blood Diamond) because he's the only "saint" we see. All the other aliens are angry, confused, and fighting back, and this guy doesn't even get violent when he sees the results of the medical experiments. In fact, he turns to the White Guy for advice. He appears to be a huge anomaly in the District 9 world, and without some explanation for why his character is such a pacifist, it appears that he's saintly only because the audience couldn't possibly identify with a scary violent alien. In short, the movie undermines its own message, assuming we cannot bring ourselves to identify with the Other unless he is like us, and completely non-threatening to boot.

I much preferred the opening documentary's portrayal of the aliens as frightening and erratic. I'd been looking up IRA history for my Brit lit class the previous day, and watching the opening minutes of District 9 I really thought they were nailing the history of colonialism and post-colonialism. Because Others *are* scary to Empowered Folks watching the news; they aren't cute and cuddly, but repulsive and frightening, and apparently in need of violent containment. The opening 30 minutes made me feel I understood the South Africans (and the Irish etc.) on a gut level more than I had when reading history books, and I wish that District 9 had continued in that challenging vein.

So, anyway: if I had to rank these films in order of me liking them, Jennifer's Body is #1, followed by District 9 at #2 and 9 at #3.

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:09:14 GMT

Yoinked from gollumgollum: Five Geek Social Fallacies (which can also be observed among non-geeks, however.)

Today's moment of happy:

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 23:36:09 GMT

I love that I get to teach literature for a living. :)

yoinked from Jeana

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 23:51:40 GMT

Darn cool dance video, from some Cirque-or-other,

The meme continues...

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 04:23:35 GMT

Today's happy: I got to ride an elephant! And hang out at the Maryland Ren Faire with sapphohestia and J. And I am now the proud owner of a hat of Total Awesome!

All in all, not a bad day's work.

Memage

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 01:01:37 GMT

It's been a while since I've memed, but given that birdgirl78 tagged me:

1. Post about something that made you happy today even if it's just a small thing.
2. Do this everyday for eight days without fail.
3. Tag eight of your friends to do the same.

(I prefer not to tag people, so if this meme appeals, just go ahead and join in.)

Today I am really happy to have an office. For real! And it's in the main building, the one where I teach!

I still don't quite know what to do with my office: I'm waiting on my research budget to buy all books to fill up the shelves, and on my first paycheck to do any decorating, so right now it resembles a grim metal coffin. But it's *my* grim metal coffin.

This week I figured out that I can leave my high-heeled shoes in my office, so that I only have to change into them for teaching. This makes me (and my feet) inexpressibly happy!

And tonight, in a fit of indulgence, I bought an extra kettle and mug, so I can treat people to tea in my office. Again, this makes me happy!

In other news, my classes all seem to be going well. I have my first batch of grading to do this weekend. Wish my students luck!

Best Man Fail

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 17:20:29 GMT

Thank God it's Friday!

However your week was, I'm sure it was better than this.

Your daily dose of story

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 18:55:19 GMT

One of my fellow Clarionites has just published a CW story over at Flurb magazine. Emily C. Skafton's My Only Sunshine is a lovely magic realist piece about relationships and the storms they do (or don't) weather.

Courtesy of Cracked

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:21:09 GMT

The 5 Creepiest Sex Scenes in Comics

your Labor Day Entertainment News

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:13:06 GMT

Oh God. NBC is Remaking "Prime Suspect". And Stallone is talking about doing a Rambo V in which Rambo hunts down a supersoldier (please stop).

In more positive news, Colin Firth will be playing King George VI in The King's Speech, a movie about the "unexpected" king's struggle to overcome his speech impediment. That's right, it's movie about British royals and speech therapy. Also, Lena Headey (300, Sarah Connor Chronicles) will play Cersei in HBO's Game of Thrones pilot, and Stephen Frears ("The Queen," "Dangerous Liaisons,") will direct an adaptation of the graphic novel "Tamara Drewe", which reimagines Thomas Hardy's "Far From the Madding Crowd."

There. Do you feel better? I do.

But, Oh God. Prime Suspect is being remade for American TV.

What rough beast is slouching towards my TV set? And how can I make it go away?

Entertainment news

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 14:58:07 GMT

Disney to Pay $4 Billion for Comic Giant Marvel

I feel like I should be saying goodbye to adult-oriented comic books. Is that too pessimistic?

In other appalling news the Fox Network is planning a TV Series Remake Of "Heathers" (um... how?)

In the news

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 14:44:23 GMT

On the Dugard case: Kidnapping Victim Was Not Always Locked Away.

In a news conference Friday, Sheriff Warren E. Rupf of Contra Costa County, which includes Antioch, offered a blunt assessment of his department’s performance, saying it had not adequately investigated a 911 call in 2006 reporting that Mr. Garrido was a psychotic sex addict who was housing children in tents in his backyard. In 2008, during an unannounced visit, an even larger team of investigators checking up on sexual predators also failed to notice the secretive backyard area behind an eight-foot fence.

...How Ms. Dugard and her children lived outside in a lot surrounded by other homes without detection for nearly two decades, as the authorities suspect, remains one of the questions in the case.

Was it one of the children who made the 9-11 call? Or a neighbour who thought because the police did nothing, there must be nothing wrong?

What fascinates me about this case is a) the control Garrido exerted over this family and b) that so many outsiders - visitors, neighbors, police - missed (or were in denial?) about what was really going on.

In the end, Garrido was nabbed by campus police. He visited Berkeley to hand out religious pamphlets, and they - not the various officials who knew he was a registered sex offender, not the neighbours who called him "creepy" - thought that the kids with him seemed "robotic." They ran his name, found out he was a sex offender, and called his parole officer, who'd never heard of him having kids at all.

In other words, all it took to catch this guy was a person going one step further than what their job required of him/her.

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 16:04:36 GMT

CFP: Superheroes Since the Year 2000

Submissions are invited for an upcoming edited book covering the superhero genre. There is a great need to re-interpret such issues as morality, power, patriotism, and heroism in this new millennium, especially as events such as 9-11, terrorism, torture, corporate profiteering, economic decline, and technological advances impact the U.S. and the world. With the success of Heroes, The Dark Knight, and numerous other superhero movies, the public is looking to understand its world through its superheroes.

This book will focus on the superhero genre in all facets of media, not just the printed comics. Articles on superhero television shows, movies, and online sites are welcome as well. However, the article must address the topic since the year 2000.

Superheroes Since the Year 2000
full name / name of organization:
Kevin D. Williams
contact email:
kwilliams@comm.msstate.edu
cfp categories:
american
cultural_studies_and_historical_approaches
film_and_television
gender_studies_and_sexuality
general_announcements
journals_and_collections_of_essays
popular_culture
religion
Submissions are invited for an upcoming edited book covering the superhero genre. There is a great need to re-interpret such issues as morality, power, patriotism, and heroism in this new millennium, especially as events such as 9-11, terrorism, torture, corporate profiteering, economic decline, and technological advances impact the U.S. and the world. With the success of Heroes, The Dark Knight, and numerous other superhero movies, the public is looking to understand its world through its superheroes.
This book will focus on the superhero genre in all facets of media, not just the printed comics. Articles on superhero television shows, movies, and online sites are welcome as well. However, the article must address the topic since the year 2000.
For our purposes, superheroes can be defined as someone having abilities beyond those of normal humans (in other words, someone with superpowers or powers gained through training). For example, characters such as Batman, Green Arrow, Harry Potter, and James Bond classify as superheroes.
Possible Topics Include Superheroes and:

• Terrorism
• Politics
• Religion
• Foreign policy
• Morality
• Capitalism
• Family
• History
• Advertising
• Sex
• Violence
• Environmental issues
• 9-11
• Technology
• Psychology
• Criminal Justice
• Gender

Contributor guidelines:
1. Abstract of paper (not to exceed 500 words) or full papers accepted.
2. CV or resume for each author and co-author.
3. Submission deadline for abstracts: October 31st, 2009.
4. Materials should be submitted by e-mail to Kevin Williams at kwilliams@comm.msstate.edu

In the news

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 19:11:56 GMT

Yeah, that sucks. The Pain of Being a Redhead

A growing body of research shows that people with red hair need larger doses of anesthesia and often are resistant to local pain blockers like Novocaine

Professor Main Target of Assault on Twitter

During the assault — the latest eruption in a yearlong skirmish between nationalistic hackers in Russia and Georgia — unidentified attackers sent millions of spam e-mail messages and bombarded Twitter, Facebook and other services with junk messages. The blitz was an attempt to block the professor’s Web pages, where he was revisiting the events leading up to the brief territorial war between Russia and Georgia that began a year ago.

Online Scammers Prey on the Jobless

Like job seekers, criminals are after moneymaking opportunities online. And they’re setting increasingly sophisticated traps to prey on the desperation of the jobless, whose guards are down amid eroding savings, swelling debts and calamities like foreclosure and bankruptcy.

The Lovely Bones - Official Trailer [HD]

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 06:16:19 GMT