you caught me lingering

Do not, under any circumstances, go and see Gabriel.

It's bad. Like. really bad. Not in the 'so bad it's good' way, just bad.

I'd tell you exactly how bad, but then I'd have to think about it again. I know if I did, the words "angsty white-boy entitlement cakes" would be involved multiple times.

Bourne Ultimatum = AWESOME.

Ratatouille next week - eee!

Getting out to the carpark to discover the car had been broken into = really not awesome. Thankfully, there was nothing in the car worth stealing, and the car was undamaged. We've figured out how they managed to do it, and the vulnerability shall be addressed. But yeah, not cool.

Still, Bourne was awesome. And Joey Asnah was awesomely kickass. I must say, though. I really wish we could get back to actually being able to watch action sequences rather than having directors try and 'immerse' us in them. It's getting a bit stupid. But aside from that ongoing Hollywood trend, it was win.

What wasn't win was the trailer for Rush Hour 3. I swear there was a racism Bingo in there, possibly two. Thus, an open letter.

Dear Jackie Chan,

Please go back to making films in Hong Kong. They were totally awesome. Please just beat the crap out of the next American film person who tries to get you to make something. Release that as a film instead, it'd be more entertaining.

no love,
me.

Also, my danger-senses are tingling about The Kingdom after seeing the trailer (clue: it's set in Saudi Arabia), but really, it's Jennifer Garner as a kick-ass government operative type character, which really scratches my OMGALIAS itch.

So, after a few weeks of peering at them strangely in the shop, I finally bought one of those self-heating coffee things. Now, I'm not particularly fussy about coffee, so my verdict should be taken accordingly, but it's actually pretty good - at least the mocha latte one is.

Haircut today was fairly painless. Head feels much lighter, which is made of yay. Except I kept cringing when the hairdresser was washing my hair, because she stopped to put shampoo/conditioner/etc in my hair, AND LEFT THE FREAKING TAP THINGY ON. This Queenslander COULD NOT COPE. ALL THAT WATER OMG. That's like a whole shower, dammit. Well, in Brisbane.

More shopping was done today, and I've finished unpacking the books, which took a little longer than usual because I was inputting them onto aNobii as I went. Oh, and just in case there was any doubt about my love of categorising regarding my books, they are currently separated into the following categories:
Fiction: SciFi/Fantasy
Fiction: Classics/Literature
Fiction: Other
Non-Fic: Gender/Race/Queers Studies
Non-Fic: Other Humanities/Social Science (ie, History/Sociology/Research Methods/Politics/Philosophy)
Non-Fic: Other
Non-Fic: Food & Cooking (which is out on the loungeroom shelves, since they're closer to the kitchen).

Bourne 3 must be viewed at some point this weekend. Possibly tomorrow. Tomorrow will also involve cooking, cleaning, and comic stores.

Oh, ran into my friend R, from uni, who graduated last year and has been working down here since January. I caught up with him when I was down for interviews, and hadn't had a chance to catch up since I moved, but we live in the same suburb, so it's unsurprising that we ran into him and his wife whilst shopping today.

Offer of random photos of stuff is still open.

They're not really drastic spoilers, but I'm feeling kind, so under the cut we go.

( Race & Gender Complaints Within )

On the whole, I enjoyed the film. I would've enjoyed it a lot more without those two issues.

First, links.

Via morchades. Best snark about fundies and same-sex marriage evar. Oh, SMH Opinion Columnist, you are made of win.

For polrua, 'cos I mentioned it the other day. Best thing to come out of 300.

In other news, I wandered into town after handing in assessment on Friday night and ended up seeing Priceless, because, hey, Audrey Tautou. There's some really sweet and funny parts in the film, but there was just something about the power and gender dynamics that really didn't sit well.Then, I kinda expected those dynamics to shit me, so the sweet and funny parts were a pleasant distraction from the expected, and really, if I only saw films with flawless politics, I'd see very few, if any. But, Audrey was lovely (though I was a little disturbed by how visible her ribs are - it's oddly distracting), and whilst Gad Elmaleh's character kinda bugged me, he himself grew on me, in that shallow sort of way, as the film progressed. *shrug* I have a weird fictional kink for slightly dorky-looking French men.

I'm still trying to figure out if I want to see Becoming Jane. Is there anyone on the who has flist seen it and would be willing to comment for or against?

I missed this in my hatred of Scorcese, and my ever-increasing hatred of American remakes of Asian films. I kinda wish I could continue missing it.

Apparently, when The Departed was being presented with the best adapted screenplay award, the voiceover helpfully advised the viewing public that the movie "is based on Infernal Affairs, a Japanese movie". (bolding mine)

...

Um, as long as I mention that it's actually a film from Hong Kong for those who might not know, I don't need to actually say why that makes me really angry, right?

And I don't need to mention why bringing up Al 'blackface' Jolson in a positive fashion whilst you're trying to pat yourselves on the back for the most diverse Oscars ever is, um, stupid, right?

no love,
me.

PS. I still don't forgive you for Crash. The whole Scorcese thing just made it worse.

So, Tuesday ended up being Spanish Film Day. It's funny, I keep going for long stretches without seeing 'foreign' and/or indie films, and whilst both can be hit and miss, when I stay away from them I manage to convince myself I'm not really a fan. But then something will draw me back into the Dendy and really, I wonder how I was kidding myself. I mean, it probably helps that mainstream Hollywood cinema has been, well, shite, but more irritating than usual, but it's just ... I dunno.

That said, I've always been vaguely uncomfortable with foreign language films being treated as a genre in itself, though I can understand why it is. But I dunno, I kind of wonder if English language films are treated as foreign lanuage films, and lumped in with, say, French films, in countries where neither is the predominant language. I dunno, I'm curious.

Anyway, movie reviews. No spoilers.

Volver made me all ... squishy. I've not been a big fan of Penelope Cruz in the past (I've only seen some of her American films before this), and I'm not certain she's Oscar material in this film, but I'm certainly much more positively disposed towards her ability, now. And really, I suspect my thinking on her Oscar chances actually have to do with her performance comparative to the rest of the cast, who were all wonderful. Which isn't to say she was bad, just didn't stand out from the rest. But the film was just ... they were women who were similar and different and complex and fleshed-out and ... people. I wanted to hug these women and keep listening to them and whilst the ending is good and well placed, I was disappointed because I'm greedy and wanted more.

Pan's Labyrinth is, Mirrormask with more gore and less whimsy. Which means, for me, that I adored it. Lovely seems an inappropriate word to describe it, but it is. Visually speaking, it's lovely. In terms of plot and theme, it's perhaps not so lovely, and yet somehow it is, at the same time. It's even less a child-friendly film than Mirrormask, because there is some fairly brutal violence, but it's not unrelenting and it feels relevant to the story, which is important, to me. I suspect there were multiple layers there for those with a better understanding of that particular section of history, so whilst there were some aspects I felt were missing something, I'm open to the idea that it was me missing something, rather than the film. Particularly because that's what it felt like whilst I was watching it.

But yes, both really lovely films, for certain definitions of lovely. And I suspect I'll be spending more time at the Dendy. There are quite a few films incoming that I wish to see.

Via madslasher: Musical Amusement. I LOL'd.

Via ozgenre and littlenell: Oscar Nominations are up. I think this year might be special in the number of films with nominations that I just blankly refuse to see. But hey, 2006 was all about my becoming as a humourless multiracial feminist who hates creativity. Except for how it wasn't. Incidentally, I think I need to go see Volver tomorrowlater today. My feminist harpy heart needs some woman-centered cinema. And really, any film that's centered on female characters without being about their love lives is worth a shot in my book.

Speaking of female characters, I'm re-reading Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca for the first time since I read it in high school, and it's reminding me of why Mr Crase-Smith was my favourite teacher in high school. I mean hell, the man made me not hate Romeo and Juliet, and given I was so entirely lacking in romantic, well, anything, at that point, that's quite an achievement. But where was I? Yes, Rebecca. There's just so many layers, and knowing more now about du Maurier's life, the context is just ... exquisite. I mean, at first glance it seems like a 'good woman v. 'bad woman' story, but there's just so many nuances and beckoning undertones that niggled at the entirely unfeminist teenager who read it in high school, to the point where a few years ago I saw it in a bookstore and it just tugged at me, and for a while now it's been sitting on my shelf and I've been afraid to read it because I didn't want to risk losing that sweet, sticky feeling in the pit of my stomach that for so long has been associated with this book. And I'm reading it and that feeling's still there and it's just wonderful. There's some fascinating potential for a feminist reading that I've not worked out in my head yet, but just thinking about it instills some kind of comfort I can't really explain. And I'll always be grateful to the high school teacher who assigned the book in ninth grade, because I don't think I'd have found it otherwise.

In other related musings, du Maurier and Rebecca has really cemented why who the author is matters so much to me in looking seriously at a work, and why authors being bigoted twits really puts me off. Putting an author's work in the context of their life changes the impression of their work. To say a work can only be 'fairly' evaluated when completely removed from the author's life is riduculous to me. The author's life and personality and such are just as relevant as the culture(s) and social structure(s) in which a work was created, and just as relevant as the culture(s) and social structure(s) in which a work is being read and interpreted. The author is not dead, merely not God. Interpretations can be made without certain contexts, but they must by their very nature be interpretations without those contexts. Whether interpretations with more context are 'more correct' is a question I'm not sure of the answer to, but I certainly believe that they're not 'less correct' than interpretations without certain contexts. Because the latter suggests that those contexts are irrelevant, and I just can't agree with that. Intersection and interconnectedness is such a crucial part of our lives; to dismiss it from our understanding of cultural artefacts seems absurd. Which is, among other things, a very long explanation for why I can't bring myself to read Ender's Game ever again.

In other news...

A Scanner Darkly bored me shitless. Seriously. At least The Day After Tomorrow had wolves, dammit. And that thing with Mexico. The amusing part of ASD was a silly comment from $tephen.

The graphics were really only interesting enough to get me through about five minutes. That said, if you have a penchant for stoner movies, you're likely to find a large chunk of this movie more interesting than I did.

$tephen raised the point this morning that the reason the film really didn't do anything for us is that PKD's whole dystopian future thing? Not really all that, well, future.

I think my other problem is that I keep hoping I'll find PKD interesting. The reality is that I really don't. His plots are weak and full of holes, and his characters tend to lack much in the way of depth. And I'd try to be surprised that it so readily reinforced default=male when given the opportunity, but, well, yeah.

Okay, so I have a major soft spot for Jason Statham. So, despite the fact that Transporter 2 kinda shat me, I went to see Crank, today.

The premise of Crank isn't bad, for B-grade action movie. It's Speed, except the bus is a dude, and the dude's a mob-connected killer. And yeah, I know to expect a certain level of misogyny in my action films, even though I don't like it. But seriously? There was not one woman in this movie who wasn't either an airhead, an ornament or a sex object, or a combination of the three.

Though, the wonderful part was the Chinatown scene.( cut for spoilers and sexual assault triggers )

So, the short version is that the movie seems to confirm that I've become, y'know, a humourless feminist harpy. Though Americans trying to insult me with dingo jokes is still hilarious. That said, I'm not even sure it's about being offended, anymore. I mean, don't get me wrong, misogyny is evil. I maintain that in a non-negotiable fashion. But perhaps even worse than that, when you consider the aims of the entertainment industry, is that misogyny is boring. I mean, in the interests of honesty, I must report that most of the rest of the cinema found the scene behind the cut hilariously funny, but I honestly just don't get it. I mean, I'm the kind of person who is endlessly amused by buttons, ffs. It's not like I'm claiming intellectual humour, here. I just, why is this shit still entertaining? It's fucking everywhere. Why aren't we bored of it yet?

As a further aside, the title sequence was really cool, but suffered from its relevance (I suspect) being lost on the cutting room floor. That kind of static-cut shots of old Atari-style video game screens into the title credits. But aside from a single mention that the main dude told his girlfriend he was really a video game programmer, the opening credits are almost completely disconnected from the film.

In closing?

Dear Jason Statham,
You're really quite cool. And as an aside, your arse isn't bad.
But I'd really like it if you could go back to making action movies that are entertaining again.
frustrated love,
me.

*beats head against wall*

That's a pretty good characterisation of my day, today. I don't really feel like talking about a lot of it, but suffice to say, therapy was a welcome occasion this evening.

The relevant point is that I've gotten my first essay of the semester written, which is due Wednesday.
Tomorrow, I skip geeknight (which sucks, but is my own damn fault, so I can't really complain) and come home after uni for editing and translating said essay to a powerpoint presentation, which is also due Wednesday.

But yeah. I am still alive. The short version of the weekend:

Friday: DOA was, um, surprisingly good. There were a few particularly jarring moments of unnecessary cheescake, but for an adaptation of the video game that was rather lacking in plot to begin with, it was pretty cool. Even if it did have Holly Valance in it.

Saturday: I got out of bed way too early. Seriously. Anniversary lunch for $'s folks. Exercising democratic right and all that. EBEParty. Being a great big nerd at said party and geeking out over Election results.

Sunday: Sleep. Wedding of a friend from uni, which was lovely, and had the most death-causing cake I've ever eaten in my life.

So there you go. And now, I'm off to bed. I have work in the morning.

So, I read Christopher Priest's¹ The Affirmation a few years ago after picking it up at a cheap books table in some bookstore I don't recall. What I do recall is adoring the book; it does really awesome things with the nature of narrative and reality and memory and all that stuff. I always meant to put him on the list of authors to find more stuff by, but never really got around to it.

Bookslut just gave me a really awesome reminder. Another of his works, The Prestige, has been adapted to film, and given Memento, I have really awesome feelings about the fact that Christopher Nolan (also of Batman Begins fame) directed.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that the film features Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman being very pretty in period costume, which makes me want to make someone entice someone to slash them in their respective superhero costumes.  Because I'm a tad twisted like that, even though I'm incapable of writing fic at the moment.

Still, I'm pleased to be reminded of the author and his awesomeness.

In other news, I was checking the tv-guide in the hopes that Channel Ten had magically abandoned the eye-stabbingly-offensive programming in the 8:30 timeslot (I'm sorry, but when you start joking about Nelson Mandela being a felon, as part of that whole "I'm going to be offensive because 'politically-incorrect' is like, cool and stuff" schtick?² I don't care that you're some kind of bizarre animation. DIE.), and whilst those hopes remain sadly unfulfilled, I did discover that SBS is screening The Daily Show: Global Edition at 10pm. *boogies* That goes some way to making up for the fact that I have no ABC reception.

¹ Because I was momentarily confused also, Christopher Priest the novel writer and Christoper Priest the comic book writer are two different people. Apparently the latter changed his name from something else without checking for possible confusions. Or something.
² Quite frankly? Irony got old a while ago. And not just because Alanis doesn't particularly understand its meaning. It's being offensive to inflate your own sense of superiority ... wait, how is that different to *isms, again? Just shut UP. And at the risk of incurring the wrath of certain sections of the f-list: Matt & Trey? I MEAN YOU.^3
3Just for the record? If you think they're funny, and they're stuff gives your jollies? That's great for you. I'm perfectly aware of my inability to have that much influence on your tastes, or whether such people will continue producing what they produce (inferring that I could have that effect is just bizarre, and if you know me and honestly think I'd believe I could have that effect, um, perhaps you should mention it, because I'm not sure I need people like that in my life). I'm exercising my right to bitch about it. If you act as though I'm trying to say you can't watch stuff, I WILL MOCK YOU.

In this whole kerfuffle about gender in Supernatural, much has been made of the fact that Supernatural slots nicely into the buddy genre.

There's already been much discussion about the notion that in the demon-killing horror genre, Supernatural has done some reassertion of masculinity, which can be seen as a reaction to Buffy. Whilst it presents a more nuanced conception of acceptable masculinity than one would expect from what is essentially a hypermasculine text, it's still a hypermasculine text, and that needs to be accepted before one starts peeling away the layers to find what's lying underneath that. And I think that in the context of the demon-killing horror genre, that in terms of big-fandom-inducing shows, we go from the steps towards reimagining gender roles in Buffy/Angel¹ to the hypermasculinity of Supernatural says interesting things.

Ah, say fans. But Supernatural has the whole buddy-road things happening. Yeah, it does. It combines the horror genre it shares with Buffy and the whole buddy 'On the Road' sort of dynamic. Kripke's admitted that himself. And, to be perfectly honest, I think that's where the problems lie. Supernatural has taken on a lot of the flaws of the buddy genre as inherent. The buddy genre, as a genre, is pretty much wearing a "not for teh womens" sign. Because, I started thinking about the buddy genre this morning, and I came up with a fairly short list as far as women in the buddy genre goes. In television, we have Cagney & Lacey. Which was, well, the 80s. Surely we have something more recent than that in television? I can't think of anything, but if someone knows more than I do, please, let me know and I'll amend accordingly. [edit]OMG. How did I forget Xena? *hangs head in shame* Still. Two is still kinda pitiful.*[/edit] In the meantime, to give the genre the benefit of the doubt, let's look at it in film. Off the top of my head, I come up with two. Thelma & Louise, and, wait for it, Romy & Michelle's High School Reunion. The latter may not appear to fit at first glance, but if we take the buddy genre in the context of paired characters with a non-romantic involvement at the centre of the text, it slots right in. Again, if I'm missing something obvious, let me know. That, um, one two in television and two in film. If you really want to tell me there's not a long list of male buddy shows and films, please. Try. Don't let crazy facts get in your way. It'll be fun![/sarcasm] But again, I think the inherent flaws of the buddy genre and how it incorporates women are interesting, and say some interesting things about gender.

At the end of the day, I think my major frustration is that people are equating "there are some issues here" with "omg fill quotas and fix it and change the whole show now omg". Because, y'know what? I haven't actually seen anyone say that, aside from people bringing it up to argue against it. There's a difference between acknowledging and asking others to acknowledge that there are issues that could do with acknowledgement and discussion, and wanting to stick a band-aid over them. And, y'know, what she said.

Edit*Upon further contemplation, I realise that I don't really consider Xena in light of the buddy dynamic; it comes across as much more Superhero/Sidekick than buddy. But I possibly haven't watched enough Xena to make a definitive judgement. That being said, augustuscaesar was lovely enough to remind me of AbFab, which I'm *really* ashamed of forgetting.

¹While I'm here? If you actually think Buffy was being painted as the pinnacle of feminist achievement? You haven't been paying attention. Took steps != pinnacle. No one said that except the people bringing it up to argue against. Come on, people. You're better than that, surely. Also, I think there's also some argument that Angel did some reassertion of it's own, but that's another discussion.

Have returned from Sydney.

First, thankyou muchly to neafthemighty for putting up with a houseguest for a few days. Twas also quite lovely having a kitten wandering around the place - it helps that Tor's such a cute little manslut of a kittun. :D

So, the weekend went something like this:

Thursday: Class, then fly to Sydney. Dad called shortly after I landed, so I agreed to have dinner with the parentals while I was down. Not particularly pleased, but smeh. Caught up with Neaf, madslasher and nolseygnu on the train, back to Neaf's for dinner and settling and watching stuff. Watched much of the first two seasons of Lois & Clark. I'd forgotten a) how dorktastic it is, b) how hot Dean Cain is (shut up, all of you). Also, first season Jimmy Olsen shat all over the other one. Watched some more after Neaf went to bed, ended up falling asleep on the couch until Neaf was about to leave for work in the morning.

Friday: Wake up on the couch, head to bed for a couple of hours before Neaf's real estate agent pops over to fix the light in the loungeroom. Have a slight panic as I can't seem to find the cat while he and the owner are here, breathe sigh of relief when he appears from the bathroom just as they leave. Silly scaredy-Tor. Then, lounging on the couch for a bit before heading to Newtown for coffee with chatondesse, then some grocery shopping, and a short trek to Marrickville Metro to get Neaf a nice big pot as a housewarming present, and so I could make a great honking pot of stew for dinner. There was discussion of Katie and Nola coming over for dinner, but they piked, so more food and watching of stuff for us. :) Fell asleep on the couch again, because I'm a twit, woke up and 7am and poured myself into bed for a few more hours.

Saturday: Woke up sometime after 11, showered and such, then Neaf and I headed to Chinatown to catch up with queenofbimbania and stompiegirl, as I had earlier this month discovered that Neaf had never been to yum cha before, and decided it was my duty to rectify this. So, yum cha at the East Ocean was good. Many many pork buns, for they are one of the most awesome foodstuffs on the planet. After yum cha it was back to Neaf's for sitting around watching stuff. Whilst doing so, I attempted to make brownie-cupcakes, but Neaf's oven hates me, so I had my first baking-disaster. Much burnt cake. Makes me a sad panda. Later, Katie and Nola asked if we wanted to go see Superman Returns again, so after a bit we dropped Em and Kerri to their respective homes, and I got my late Christmas present from Em (eee! a monkey!), then off to the movies. Superman is still pretty, and this viewing prompted some wonderful snark. Particularly at Lois Lane wearing glasses. Because that's just amusingly stupid. I had considered heading out to BlackPlanet afterwards, but after movies and such, I was too tired and really just wanted to go to bed.

Sunday: Lazy day, some shenanigans with parents, what with Dad thinking I'd come round to see them earlier, but whatever, I went round for a while, got a shiny new digital camera, then off to dinner. Mother chucked a hissy fit about 500m from home and made us take her back, at which point Dad reveals that they hadn't spoken for about 2 weeks. -_- Oh well. Safe in the knowledge that Mother's hissy fit was her problem, and my newfound feeling that the effect of said hissy fit on Dad is also not my problem, I went and had dinner with Dad, and chatted about stuff with little guilt or angst. Dad dropped me home, wherein I got hugs and kitten-cuddles, and we watched Mirrormask again. For Gaiman and McKean are gods of crack. Talked to the boy for a bit, watched some more stuff, then off to bed.

Monday: A sleep in, followed by packing, then off to town for lunch with domesticmouse, followed by some wandering about town and shopping and a brief internet-cafe stint, before catching the train home with Neaf and a dash to the airport. Realising I'd told Debs the wrong arrival time, I left her a message to see if she could be at the airport in Brisbane an hour earlier than originally planned, but didn't hear back before I had to turn the phone off. Luckily, it was cool, so she arrived just as I was picking up my baggage and heading out of the airport to wait for her. A stop at McDonald's for dinner, then home again.

A fairly relaxed trip, which was nice. Particularly with the seeing Mother without being a complete mess afterwards. It seems this therapy thing is doing something useful. I need to work on the snarkiness in her presence, but that sort of thing takes time.

And now, off to class and stuff.

AwwwAngst. Hey, the creepy guy from the P&P Remake! Shiny! MONKEY! OoohPretteh. GUH. CTHULHU! MONKEY! Uh, that was kinda porny. GUH. Noooo! ARGH!Where-did-your-arse-kicker-y-goWTF? GUH. Hehehehehamsters. GUH. Nooo! ErghUmOhhhhhRight. AHAHAHAHAHAPORN. ArghAngst. MONKEY!

Uh, yeah.

So, um, scruffy!Norrington is much-approved-of. Like, seriously approved of. Guh. With the hair and the scruffy and SNARKGUH. I'm still balancing whether Elizabeth was awesome or troubling.

ANd I'm cranky I have to wait for the next one. I want Chow Yun Fat, dammit.

And now, bed. Which I was supposed to do like, half an hour ago.

PS. I'm happy, the icon's just because it's Jack. :D

Paddywhack! How had I not realised Paddywhack was in Flight of the Phoenix (the new version)?

Oh, that's right. I was too busy being baffled at the fact that Dennis Quaid was somehow hot, which was the same reason I hadn't realised Hugh Laurie was in it. Silly Dennis Quaid

( Edit with stuff )

Aaaand, I'm done.

Superman II's special effects amuse me. Though not enough to keep me awake after a stress-tastic June 30.

Dad hasn't tried to call me since the unpleasant phone incident of Thursday night, which, for those not privvy to details can be summed up as "My mother is still an insensitive and active danger to my mental state, and my Father's not particularly great, either, what with his enabling behaviours". I'm pretty much done with that, aside from probably talking to my therapist about it this week.

I shall be in Sydney July 20 to 24, which was originally a trip to see the folks and see friends around that, but will most likely now simply be a trip to see friends. I have some plans already, and shall be staying with Neaf, but anyone who feels like catching up (particularly Friday and Monday during the day, as teh Neafster will be at work), leave a comment or something. Otherwise, I'll probably do my regular tour of Bondi/Bronte, and possibly a trip to the Art Gallery/MCA.

For the most part, I liked Superman Returns. Singer pays a good homage to the original Superman films (and, for a Jewish boys, does a really good line in Messiah complex). Lois bugged me, but I think she was always going to bug me, and she did better than I expected, so that's something. The 20 minute long flight of Superman and Lois through Metropolis wasn't really necessary, though. Seriously. Brandon Routh does a good job of channelling Christopher Reeve, which some found problematic, but I rather liked. I agree with Neaf in that we needed more Clark, for his Clark was dork-tastic. Kevin Spacey does a good line in Lex Luthor, and Crazy!Ev0l in general *loves on him*. And wheeeParkerPosey! Though I wonder whether she's a bit tired of being typecast as far as her higher-profile roles go (cf. Josie & the Pussycats and Blade:Trinity). I found the semi 1930s/40s feel of the film a strange kind of cool. All in all, a good Superman film. Also, the mention of Gotham made me squee.

The previews for the film made no sense to me. Okay, so My Super Ex-Girlfriend made some sort of sense, but that doesn't make me hate it any less. It looks offensively bad. A female character with superpowers is not a strong female character if she's being all 'omgyoudumpedme'. But what really makes this annoy me? The same guy responsible for writing this misogynistic trash is writing the screenplay for Fantastic Four and the Silver Sufer? Fuck you, Don Payne. Also: Why do we need another M. Night Shyamalan film? Seriously. You keep writing the same stories with the same omgtwist that nobody sees coming. Unless they have, y'know, brain cells. Just STOP. Please.

This evening was a visit to the in-laws which included dinner, and retuning home to have Kyrie chuck a spaz, so I rebooted to discover she wasn't reading either of the hard drives. Cue panic, and calling the boy, who made helpful suggestions, and got me to the point of discovering that the 300GB secondary HDD was overheating and causing Kyrie to kick into preservation strategies. I've unhooked that drive and am just running on the primary drive atm, until I can work out cooling strategies (On that note, props to maffoo for useful suggestions and such). I'm definitely thinking a new machine is in order when I move to Canberra. A new media PC that can cope with multiple mass storage hard drives and stocked with decent video and sound cards so I can use it as the media machine, with Kyrie being kept as the primary professional (read: academia/research) machine.

1. Humans (as in non-mutants) in the X-verse* are stupid. I simply cannot fathom even a fictional idea that human health + extras = disease. I can even understand (whilst finding reprehensible) the idea that gayness is a disease, because it works from an assumption of opposite-sex attraction as an integral part of human health, and gayness in the minds of most people with a 'gayness=disease' mindset is to a considerable extent considered as a lack of opposite-sex attraction. But most mutants aren't lacking anything in terms of human health; Wolverine for example has human health bonus cards. How exactly does 'stupidly fast regenerative capabilities' = illness? It's like, anti-illness. Seriously. I don't get it. $ has tried to explain it, but I still just don't get it.

2. So, as far as Doctor Who goes; I'm not fond of Rose. A short while ago, it actually occurred to me that much of my Rose-dislike has less to do with Rose than it does with the fact that I have a general dislike for companions (Now that I think about it, Rose is probably one of the better companions, really); their role generally involves doing stupid shit, getting saved and, in a meta sense, providing a central human chracter which the audience can relate to and use as a kind of literary bridge to The Doctor. I just don't see the point. I will admit that they've done some interesting things, companion-wise, in the new seasons, but yeah. They just generally kind of irk me, mostly for that final meta reason. Following on from that, it occurred to me that one of the things I would really love from sci-fi television/film is a storyline that doesn't have central human characters; a show/film that challenges the notion that audiences *need* central human chracters to relate to. That would be awesome.

3. Watching X1 & X2 again** affirmed just how much better they were compared to X3. Also, I love Eric's pathos. I have an urge to write fic about Eric's pathos. It's just kind of sitting there, in my brain, wanting to be moulded into something. I haven't had that feeling in ages.

4. Apparently I'm odd for considering the academic theory reasons why Wincest*** isn't wrong on certain levels. Which some could consider a fault in academic theory, but it's not. It's just that I'm taking the theory places I don't think it was ever intended to be taken, even though it can be.

*Note that I'm talking movie-verse, here. I'd be curious as to any differences in comic-verse, but I sense danger in getting immersed in comic-verse.
**I didn't watch X3 again so much as nap through it and see the occasional scene. I'm not sure how much of it was tiredness and how much of it was my brain not wanting to compare them properly.
***If you don't know, you probably don't want to. Really.

We have confirmation from the great man himself that every character in a Bryan Singer-directed production before now is gay. That includes House, Wilson, Xavier, Magneto, Wolverine, Cyclops, and the entire cast of The Usual Suspects.

...Because apparently they're all gayer than Superman. Props to sharpest_rose for that gem, which made me choke, from laughing so hard.

I now need icons of various characters listed above with the caption 'gayer than Superman'.

Fandom has never been happier. :D

Of course, one of the other amusing things about it all is that apparently this internet buzz about Superman's sexuality didn't exist before journalists started looking for things to write about the movie. *snortchuckle* I think that's even more amusing, in the grand scheme of things.

House raises an eyebrow.

In random news, PotC 2 should not be named Dead Man's Chest.

From now on, it shall be known as Priates of the Carribean: OT3 versus Cthulhu.

And it will be awesome.