Life on Queen Street

Will no one rid me of this troublesome motion picture producer?

Seriously, George, enough.

Twilight looks like the stupidest thing ever.

Emo teen vampires in love - are you fucking kidding me?

Sparlking emo teen vampires in love.

Jesus Christ on a stick.

Am I the only person who remembers when the blood-sucking undead were meant to be scary?


Thank you, lyssie for the link.

Feminist, you say. O RLY?

How come Jamie Bamber isn't the one getting a bikini wax?

*I* get so tired of hearing comic book writers like Ron Marz making comments like:

I get so tired of hearing of the sniping comments about "Witchblade" being a “T&A” book; always from ill-informed dopes who haven’t looked past the cover of the book in, say, the last five years.

The cover image from the issue in question is here. The variant cover is here.

Gee, Mr. Marz, maybe if someone took the tits and ass off the cover of your book, people would stop talking about it being a tits&ass book? The fact that the cover used to market your work regularly features one or more woman clad in garments that are improbable at best due to the forces exerted by gravity on the female body and regularly leave the women's asses hanging out might possibly have something to do with how people characterize your work.

Comic book writers work in a visual medium. Strangely, that inclines their audience towards judging a book by the visual presented on the cover. So either ditch the T&A covers or live with the T&A rep - this ain't Tolstoy you're selling. Playing the "I wasn’t interested in writing stories that were excuses for Sara’s clothes to fall off" card while your editors are putting out shit like this gets you no sympathy from me.

Either you support how the book is presented or you don't but blaming your potential audience for reacting negatively to the exact impression that these covers are calculated to create - namely "ooh, lots of mostly naked women inside" - is chickenshit.

One comment on Canadian politics before I get on with the geekery: Bwahah - also, does that first point mean that Mulroney basically did everything Stevie Cameron said he did and, if so, did he perjure himself when he sued her?

More for electriclandthan anyone else: long interview with Jeff Smith about Bone, making & marketing Bone, his work on Shazam for DC and his new series Rasl. Smith gets extra points for proving his cool with the Jaws quote at the end.

( Why No One Is Reading Comics Anymore (or where are the next generation of comic book fans going to come from? Anywhere? Anyone? Hello? Bueller? )

*phew*

I needed to get that out of my system apparently. I think I'm suffering some sort of geek ennui: the other week it was the Speed Racer trailer, this week I find myself not caring about the new Indiana Jones movie, I Am Legend, an A-Team movie, a new Conan movie and the new Dark Knight trailer. When Christian Bale in the Batsuit does nothing for a girl, it's a sign.

After my hissy fit about Speed Racer, I went on to write:

I think the point at which I decided the American film industry needed
to be an overhaul of Carthagean proportions was when I realized they'd
made an Alvin and the Chipmunks movie. And while SR doesn't offend on
quite that level, who the fuck cares? He-Man movie? Ditto. They're
fucking making GI goddamn Joe, for Chrissakes - with that
self-satisfied arrogant prick who played Darth Maul as Snake Eyes. I
get that there were a lot of people who loved Transformers,
personally, I think anyone who was actually old enough to watch
Transformers on channel 29 afterschool during the 80s and still gives
a fuck should seek help.

Where are the Aliens? Where are the Terminators? Fuck even Star Trek
and Star Wars were new ideas (or new spins on old ideas) once. The
entire US film industry is so focused on the summer blockbuster and
the holiday Oscar movie, anyone wanting to do something new
practically needs to go to Japan, film it there and then wait for some
Hollywood dickhead to offer for the US rights.

Giving Michael Bay 300 million to make what was essentially a
computer-generated cartoon of a cartoon some Korean made a buck
sixty-five an hour to draw 25 years ago is probably the most egregious
example of the utterly soulless and creatively bankrupt shithole that
Hollywood has become. And I like Hollywood movies - big, dumb and
stupid: check, check and check. Love'em. Sweaty summer nights spent in
cool, air-conditioned movies theatres? Close to the most fun you can
legally have in a dark room full of two or three hundred strangers.
But they're killing it, killing it with a small-minded, timorous
business model that rewards artificial benchmarks (opening weekend
gross? Means jack in terms of profitability) and floods the market
with shit, then whines that they can only afford to make movies that
appeal to the widest possible audience because their last three
remake/sequel/adaptation pieces of shit tanked. Meanwhile, rising
ticket prices inflate box office reports, while hiding the fact that
the theatre-going audience had shrunk every single year for the last
20 years.

And that was before I read about Singleton directing The A-Team or the plot details for Terminator 4. It's like for every Battlestar Galactica (The Lord of the Rings) we're being force-fed six Bionic Womans and a Live Free or Die Hard and it's about driving me batshit. I don't want to see another movie with Indiana Jones. You know when I wanted another Indy movie? 1988. I didn't then and don't now want to watch a 60-year-old Indy bitch about his arthritis from being dragged under the truck that time. I don't want to know ( spoilerish maybe ) The first three movies were great but their time has past - how about someone at Lucasfilm/Dreamworks use their big, billion-dollar brains and come up with a brand new idea for a movie?

Frankly, everyone involved with the A-Team should be nuked from orbit just so we can be sure that we got them all and GI Joe is just so fucking sad it makes Transformers look like an act of creative genius. At least, with CGI, you can make an argument that a film would create something new on screen we hadn't seen before. Has there ever, in the history of Hollywood, been a shortage of stupid war movies? Meanwhile, I'm tired of adaptations that "simplify" (meaning to excise or rewrite for the perpetually bewildered everything that made the story interesting in the first place) the source material for the movies as if film audiences were, by virtue of watching rather than reading, stupid or it is impossible to convey complex ideas cinematically. To which I respond a) fuck you and b) go see Atonement, Ken Branagh's Hamlet, or Jackson's The Lord of the Rings and buy a fucking clue. But skip The Golden Compass for God's sake.*

As for The Dark Knight, it would be easier if I didn't think the batcycle do-hickey looked silly. It just looks... dumb. Batman should be cool and cool is hard to pull off IRL environs, what with the ears and the cape. The ears and the cape and the Big Wheels-esque bike remind me of a five year old on Hallowe'en. It's not a very cool mental image.

Things I do care about: the first stills from the upcoming Hellboy movie (also an adaptation but at least a fresher one - and Guillermo del Toro has a thing or two to teach about complexity and film (Pan's Labyrinth)) are out and they look cool.

There are also some character shots from Greg Rucka's graphic novel Whiteout on Newsarama. I'm not so sure about this one. While I would love to see a film version of Rucka's Queen & Country series, I hear they've messed with the plot and, to be honest, Kate Beckinsale looks too refined and too English to play Carrie Stetko, a scruffy US deputy marshall who is banished to Antarctica for failing to play well with others.

And, for shits and giggles, the best unfinished Batman story ever from the guys at PVP.

Finally, I am: ( some Chow Yun-Fat character I've never heard of )

( and my daemon is a German Sheperd )

And from what I've seen of Pullman's universe, will probably enjoy a lovely career in the service or law enforcement industries. Urgh, made of fail, Pullman, made of fail.

*evilgrin

Will now be called: "The Season with the Exact Same Structure as Season One Only Not as Interesting Because You've Actually Seen All This Before".

No, really - next week's episode takes us back four months to find out what happened right after last year's climax. Last year, we went back six months to find out how all the heroes' powers started to manifest. While I feel like it's unkind to kick the writers while they're on strike but are you fucking kidding me? There's good writing, there's writing to a formula and then there's rewriting your own damn scripts*.

If it weren't for Kristen Bell and the fact that I love Veronica Mars almost as much as I love Batman (and I'm in Ireland and my TV options are limited)....

*I'm strongly tempted to blame this on the fact that Tim Kring is not, in fact, a comic book geek. He's borrowing the tropes and the mythos but he's a tourist**. He doesn't understand the patois, the rhythms of the neighbourhood or, apparently, the concept of a 'nemesis.' Just because Batman is always fighting Joker doesn't mean that it's the same story every time***. Good comics are like the Impressionists, like taking Seurat, Monet, Degas and Matisse and telling them to paint a sunset: same sun, same view, four completely different results (there's probably also a Jazz metaphor that would work here). Yes, Superman always saves the day but it's the variation in the how that keep us hooked. Or, long rant short - it's Not. Always. The. Same. Story. You. Plank.

**No, having Jeph Loeb as a guide is not sufficient: three words - Batman/Superman *vomit*.

***And just because sometimes it is the same story is not an excuse.

Anne of Green Gables: A New Beginning!?

NO. Just... no.




eta: to quote lyssie, "MATTHEW IS ROLLING OVER IN HIS GRAVE, PEOPLE."

IN HIS GRAVE.

I've taken up Archery, so it's now not merely the historical inaccuracies running rife through the Beeb's current Robin Hood series that pisses me off, it's the piss poor archery. Or it would be if I watched an episode rather than twitching and cursing my way through the promo that runs in the middle of Jonathan Ross.

Craps tables and emo bangs. Jesus, Beeb, you should have more pride. And don't even get me started on this. I'm not sure what's more disturbing: her vacuous, open-mouthed sex kitten pout or her fucked up grip, string hand and stance. Jesus.

Dear Marvel Comics,

Thank you for your preview of the cover of Uncanny X-Men #491. I was actually considering heading up to town to visit Forbidden Planet when I caught this pic on Digital Femme.

Thank you for reminding me why I no longer read comics books in general and purchase your products in particular. All that was missing from my day was a drawing of Storm's bared asscheeks as she lies on her face in a gutter after a beat-down.

For yea and verily, it is a sin to be a woman and lo, therefore, Storm got what was coming to her. Fuck you very much for the reminder.

No love and, more pertinently, no dollars,

ME

Jesus, everytime I think maybe I'll check out a comic book for auld lange syne (or because Greg Rucka, that bastard, waited until I quit comics to finally drop Queen & Country no. 32 - No worries, dude, I've only been waiting a freaking year, I can do the extra few months/years until/if the trade comes out on my head *rassumfrassum*), I see shit like this and I'm pissed off all over again.

And, as we've established, Perpetually Pissed-Off does not accessorize well with my new outlook on life.

That said, domestic violence? Is not fucking cool, Intertoobz.

Imagine that instead of Canary clocking Green Arrow, it was GA laying a smack on his lady-love. Would anyone consider that appropriate foreplay? Or more to the point, would it get printed? True, we live in the era of B&D Marvel covers but people now generally agree that wife/girlfriend/child beaters are scumbags.

So why do we still put up with this bullshit in fiction where it's not only okay for a woman to smack around her (male) partner, it's considered cute? Because here's a reality check for you - it's not. When your partner hits you, it's not cute, it's not romantic and it sure as hell doesn't put you in the mood. And it really doesn't matter who's doing the hitting - it's a violation of trust, it's hurtful and it's wrong. For both sexes.

I'm also pissed because the whole 'slap/wrestle/clinch' gag infantalizes the female character, implying that she is unable to tell the difference between anger and desire until she is shown her 'true' feelings by the more dominant and assured male, totally unfazed, of course, by either the slap or her attempts to resist his seduction (bitch, please *eyeroll*). As a 'literary' - and we use the term loosely indeed here - trope, this shit just barely plays in Gone with the Wind but there's no excuse to fall back on such trite, lazy and negative characterizations today. Particularly not when the female character in question is supposed to be one of the best martial artists in the world. When I studied Aikido, my sensei solemly instructed us that our training was a serious matter and not something that we showed off to friends at parties - what we were learning could result in someone being seriously hurt - but it's okay for Black Canary to be slapping her fiancee around?

Riiiiiiiiiiiight.

Here's the thing about equality - it cuts both ways, hence the word "equal". It isn't wrong for a man to hit a woman because she's smaller than him - it just makes it that much more heinous - it's wrong because violence is wrong. And if it's wrong for a man, it's wrong for a woman. And everytime we wink and accept a lesser or a double standard where women are concerned, we undermine that fundamental tennet and make it that much easier to excuse other acts of violence.