REVIEW: Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest

All right, I'm going to be frank: you might have noticed that this review is a little bit of a departure for me.  Not in the sense that it's done over a terrible, terrible horror film.  (I hold those to my bosom and perhaps coo over them a little bit.  The neighbors ask me to stop in increasingly worried tones.  We have a fun relationship.)  Rather, in the sense that it's a review of a horror film made in 1995 with the proceeds of my couch cushions delivered from the future.  The only two cast members who are remotely famous today are Nicholas Brendan, who is a basketball-playing extra, and Charlize Theron, who dies of being stabbed through the vagina.  I'm relatively certain that they both have attorneys drawing up C&Ds for me purely for mentioning their names in connection to this glorious hot mess.

Children of the Corn III first came to my attention due to the thespian talents of Mari Morrow and Duke Stroud, they who inspired the very astute question: "I write about superheroes.  Why the hell do people keep finding a straight-to-VHS mess when they search for my name?"

Fellow geeks, I say unto thee: chillax.

Yes, we've all heard the news by now.  Yes, Ben Affleck is going to be Batman.  The sky is falling, DC is doomed forever, we're all still going to see this movie but we are by-God use our Comic Book Guy voices as we do it.

Guys.  It's going to be all right.  Allow me to make a plea on behalf of Benny.

1) Gigli was a long time ago.  Lord help me if I was still held accountable for all of my lapses in taste and judgement over the years.

2) Argo.

3) Hollywoodland.

4) His directorial history.  I highly disliked Man of Steel on the basis of its being too grim and failing to understand the ultimate optimism of Supes in the slightest, but DC has decided to take their cinematic universe in a darker direction and it is what it is at this point.  Batman is a noir figure; Affleck is excellent at noir.

Give the man a chance, oh intarwebs.  I thought Chris Evans and Mark Rufalo were going to be steaming piles of cat mess when they were announced, and I could not imagine any other actors playing Steve Rogers or Bruce Banner now.

I make my own fun.

So, I was butt-dialed earlier today. That's fine, crap happens (no pun intended) when you have an iPhone. I just listened to the background chatter for about ten seconds and then hung up. Then I got a text from the same number saying "Your dumb". Well, then. I either have a merry prankster on my hands or a person in possession of a sentient ass. These are both scenarios in which I must know more!

First Response: No u. Particularly as I don't know who you are. This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship, spectacular rivalry, or both, nonny!

Second Response: Do you want to lose out on the merchandising opportunities? I don't! I could be the Loki to your Thor!

Third Response: In the interest of full disclosure, I'm kind of the Loki to everyone's Thor.

Bizarrely, I have yet to receive a response. I am eagerly awaiting a .pdf business plan or a .throughmydoor monosyllabic blond dude, however.

"She's Got a Real Nice...Voice."

My earliest memory is of watching a horror movie with my dad when I was about eighteen months, maybe as much as two and a half years old. (Certainly no older.) I use the term "horror" because the goal of the movie was to scare the crap out of everyone watching, though by today's standards it would probably ring more hokey than frightening. It was filmed in black and white, with the particular and oddly endearing softness that marks old film. A blonde in a nightie was traipsing through a dimly lit room. As she turned to gaze pensively into the camera, a warty monster hand reached out from behind the window curtain and stretched slowly towards her throat.

My mother chose this moment to walk in the front door laden down with grocery bags. She noticed the ghoul behind the curtain several seconds before the blonde in the sexy-chaste white nightgown caught on, long enough to turn her head towards my father and fix him with the kind of withering, paragraph-heavy glare that only spouses who have been together for a long time can pull off. Before he could defend himself or make up an excuse for why it was actually educational for a toddler to watch a strangling, no, really, I took over matters for him.

Pointing at the television screen with all of the gravitas that a person still wearing Pampers could muster, I intoned, "Boogie man, Mommy. Boogie man."

Yeah. I didn't have a chance. By the time that I hit adolescence, I loved the late seventies/early eighties slasher flicks like I had loved my Gem doll and Sci-Fi Saturday as a child, because girls got to be cool. The age of the Final Girl* had begun. My friends and I would have constant slumber parties at the house of the friend with most permissive mom, and Scream featured heavily. Horror movies have always been right at the pulse point of what's troubling society at that particular time (much like comic books and superheroes, and that's why I less-than-three them both), the Scream franchise being no exception. The first film was made in 1996, right at the height of self-important irony in media**. The first movie took apart the rules of horror movies and put them back together in new and fun ways, winking at the audience all the while. The next three have continued the trend of mocking themselves, analyzing themselves, then mocking their over the top analysis, and have never stopped being fun. (Even the third one. I refuse to be ashamed.)

But above all, the movies have Sidney Prescott. She's only seventeen in the first movie and spends a lot of her time alternately brooding and screaming, but pulls it together to kick bountiful amounts of ass in the climax. She continues this pattern over the course of the next three movies, steadily growing stronger, more willing to rush into danger because it's right. She never crosses the line into pursuing trouble before it comes to her (as many attempts on her life as she's survived at this point, that would surely qualify her for superhero status). As of the fourth movie, she's still kicking strong fifteen years after most horror ingénues make their exits.

So, in honor of Halloween: here's to you, Sidney Prescott, one of my very favorite Final Girls.

*Even though Clover's point in Men, Women, and Chainsaws was that female characters had to really be dude stand-ins because they were, like, powerful and interesting and stuff. -_- face forever.

**This is the same time period in which Lady Gaga was reaching adolescence. 'Nuff said.

Review: Comic Book Nation by Bradford Wright

Description: As American as jazz or rock and roll, comic books have been central in the nation's popular culture since Superman's 1938 debut in Action Comics #1. Selling in the millions each year for the past six decades, comic books have figured prominently in the childhoods of most Americans alive today. In Comic Book Nation, Bradford W. Wright offers an engaging, illuminating, and often provocative history of the comic book industry within the context of twentieth-century American society.

From Batman's Depression-era battles against corrupt local politicians and Captain America's one-man war against Nazi Germany to Iron Man's Cold War exploits in Vietnam and Spider-Man's confrontations with student protestors and drug use in the early 1970s, comic books have continually reflected the national mood, as Wright's imaginative reading of thousands of titles from the 1930s to the 1980s makes clear. In every genre—superhero, war, romance, crime, and horror comic books—Wright finds that writers and illustrators used the medium to address a variety of serious issues, including racism, economic injustice, fascism, the threat of nuclear war, drug abuse, and teenage alienation. At the same time, xenophobic wartime series proved that comic books could be as reactionary as any medium.

My Thoughts: Loved it without reservation. It would be obvious that Wright is a lively and sincere comics fan even if the preface had been omitted, and it's because he loves them that he's able to give such an insightful, expansive history and occasional critique of the medium across its eighty-year history. He rejects as hardly worth debate the notion that comics are juvenile and inconsequential, but ground his observations in the larger trends rather than jargon-laden "decoding." (Which I appreciated a great deal: to paraphrase Jim Carrey, the pen is blue, the pen is blue, sometimes the goddamned pen is just blue, all right?) He's blunt about the medium's flaws when it comes to gender, race, and sexuality (and inadvertently answered Marvel's own question about why they can't consistently snag a large percentage of female readers, as X-Men's female readership shot up with the inclusion of a multiplicity of complex female characters) and enthusiastic and thoughtful about its strengths. Most pleasing to me: in addition to focusing on what comic book heroes and villains can tell us about our ourselves, he spends a fair amount of time talking about the way that they can also shape our society. We need our heroes, the ones in the firefighters' helmets and the ones who wear capes.

The difference between "revenge" and "avenge" lies in a kickin' suit.

The official Avengers trailer is out. You might have heard.

What amuses me the most about this very amusing trailer (I would promise to live-tweet the movie when it premieres, but it's not concern about spoilers that halts me, it's the fact that I'm going to be squeeing like a damn fool during the whole thing) is that Tom Hiddleston, surprisingly one of the least geeky members of the cast, apparently spent the entire filming struggling not to die of glee.

(I know, I know, I indirectly promised bear-poking on Ye Olde Twitter yesterday, but it needs some editing; one does not poke bears unless one is absolutely sure she has looked ahead to the counterarguments. Little Miss Likes To Fight will probably be paying a visit this weekend instead.)

How do different mediums tell such different stories?

Are We Living in the Golden Age of Male Objectification?

vs.

The Big Sexy Problem with Superheroines and Their 'Liberated Sexuality'.

How can the news be so good concerning gender equality--or at least cheesecake equality--be so different from one media form to the other? And what does this say about comics continuing reputation for being solely for the boys? (Movies aren't known for being particularly progressive, after all, stereotypes about Hollywood or not.) I remember watching Casino Royale in theaters a few years back and one reviewer losing his mind in a very public and hilarious way over the "homosexual subtext" of the way that the camera lingered so lovingly over Daniel Craig coming out of the water in those tiny little swim shorts because he honestly could not conceive of the idea of gratuitous candy shots being thrown in for the sake of the women in the audience. (Nor would the "homosexual subtext" that the reviewer ruined his reputation over have been a bad thing. Candy for all!) I know I've mentioned before in this space how fun and refreshing I find it that Marvel realizes women attend its movies, too. The great thing about this "Golden Age of Male Objectification" is that the male characters still have things to do when their clothes are on. I will not deny that I giggled like a twelve year-old a time or two over just how insanely long Chris Hemsworth's legs are during Thor, but he still saved the Jotun, got down with his Shakespearean family drama, and became a king. I don't have the slightest problem with Starfire leaping into bed with Jason Todd so long as she, you know, still has a personality and agency on the other side of the bedroom door. That is where DC is failing, not in making the eyecandy in the first place.

(And now that I've bitched, I do have to say that the news from the DCnU is not all grim: holy hell, Batwoman and Wonder Woman were full-stop awesome. I dug the hell out of the horror aspects of Wonder Woman's story and think that her current artistic team is treating her like an equal member of the DC Trinity for pretty much the first time ever. Keep it up, guys! I might also add that WW was staggeringly beautiful while she was also kicking ass and taking names, so it's not like being pretty and being a fully-fleshed character at the same time is such a Herculean task.)

EDIT: Changed title because I was confusing some folks into thinking that I'm on DC's side in the Starfire/Catwoman debacle. Whoo-buddy, not even a little bit.

And once again my poor impulse control rears its ugly head.

Ridiculously inexpensive indie books, all weekend long!

Yeah, I'm going to be making this face for the next three days:

Sorry.

HEY HEY WHAT DO YOU SAY

Jessica Verday hasn't had the best of years. There was the tiny little issue of an editor attempting to pressure her into taking the gay romance out of her YA novella in order to turn it into a heterosexual love affair, her refusal and the yanking of the story, and the publishing house's subsequent attempts to burn her career. (Cleolinda has the full deets here, and I'm not ashamed to say that the house's behavior was a major factor in this pretty miss deciding to go indie. I try to control my millworker mouth when I'm on the internet, but certain anatomically improbable things with a chainsaw might have been suggested.)

Happily for us, however, she has plucked herself up and is now selling the novella, Flesh Which Is Not Flesh, as a stand-alone. Even better, 50% of the proceeds through August 31 will go to the Living Beyond Tolerance scholarship fund. So go forth, my lovelies, to buy and then promote like mad promoting things!!!

(I admit that I should not be allowed candy in the afternoons, but still: this is very cool, y'all.)

Hugo Weaving Is a Creepy Mofo: An Essay in Pictures.

As I mentioned on this blog, I saw Captain America a few weeks ago and was duly impressed. Most of my praise went to Chris Evans, whom I had not anticipated would be able to tone down his comedic side enough to deliver on the gravitas required for a capital-letter Heroic role. (And was I ever glad to be wrong; I'm even more excited about The Avengers now.) What I am now fearing, however, is that I neglected to praise one of the movie's other major tent pegs, Hugo Weaving as Red Skull. That man is creepy, y'all. Case in point:

Granted, Weaving is most known for his villains, but that's a headshot! When you look as if you drag the skin off of your forehead all the way around to the back of your skull in order to make another face in a generic headshot, maybe there are certain roles that are naturally going to find their way to you.

So you can't hear him utter his trademark "Mr. Anderson." Does that really stop a cold chill from running up your spine?

Okay, you might be saying, so Mr. Weaving scored one, now two iconic villain roles and is going to have more loose skin than a Shar-Pei once he reaches a certain distinguished age. It's not fair to call him creepy based upon that. After all, the man does play heroes sometimes...

His eyebrows do that naturally? But I'm not being fair. After all, I haven't discussed my favorite role of his yet.

Most convincing good guy he's ever played. Can't imagine why.

(This is what I do when it's raining too hard to run errands, folks.)

There's a new webslinger in town.

Marvel is debuting a new Spider-Man.

1. First surprising thing: the new Spider-Man is biracial.

2. Second surprising thing: neither of those races is white.

The sadly not surprising thing is the number of fanboy heads that are exploding over this. Guys. Guys. Chill out, you're making the fine dork tradition look bad. The vast majority of superheroes are straight, white, male, and cisgendered. The majority of the human race is not. Hell, even in the US, where Marvel will presumably be concentrating most of its publicity dollars and expecting the majority of its sales, straight, white cis-dudes are still the minority. That means the rest of us who enjoy a good hero now and then? Are already completely down and well-versed in empathizing with someone who isn't like us demographically. Trust me, it's not that hard. If you can believe that a man can fly, a couple of gods can come down from Asgard to play out their Shakespearean family dramas amongst the mortals, and Batman can have a sleepover without accidentally killing someone in a rage blackout, you can handle a black Spider-Man. I promise. Here, take my hand. Now: deep breath in, deep breath out, deep breath in. Now remind yourself that Miles Morales is stepping up to do the right thing armed only with inexplicable powers and/or pluck, just like Peter Parker before him.

There. That's not nearly as scary as you thought it would be, is it?

On Heroes

So, I saw Captain America on Sunday, and I loved it for all of the reasons I've been enjoying Marvel movies lately: aesthetic consistency (I can easily picture the two Iron Man movies, Thor, and Captain America happening in the same world), remembering that good is not boring and that this ride should be fun, and perfect casting*.

To be frank, it's the second item in that list there that has me swinging more and more to Marvel's side of things after years of being a DC fangirl. (To the vast amusement of a certain hardcore Marvel fan that I'm friends with.) (And DC making it more clear every day that they don't want girls in their clubhouse certainly doesn't help.) I have a sad confession that I must make to you all: I love heroes. When I say that I'm a recovering DC fangirl, I mostly mean that I'm a recovering Superman fangirl. I love characters who do the right things because they're right, even when it's hard, even when it hurts, for reasons bigger than their personal baggage. (I haven't seen the final Harry Potter movie yet. I know that I'm going to bawl like a bitty girl as soon as it gets Harry's walk through the forest, and I would rather do that in a theater with as few people in it as possible so that I can at least pretend to have dignity.) Because good characters don't have to be boring, and heroism needn't always arise in response to a darkly hidden trauma. More than that, good characters who step up and get their hero on for no other reason than because the world needs them and they have the power to make a difference stand as symbols to us. Media is a powerful, powerful tool when it comes to shaping how we view the world and interact in it** Heroes are symbols of what we can strive to be even if we're not terribly strong, don't have a magic hammer, or can't fly. The empathy and concern for others, that is something that anyone can do, and that's why I will always and unabashedly love writing and reading about heroes. During the film, a little boy runs by with his own makeshift Captain America shield, going to play the hero in whatever way he can. It's probably my favorite moment out of the whole movie.

Oh, dear. I think I'd better go now, before I get even more disgustingly earnest and/or Platonic. We'll return to your regularly scheduled snark next time!

*I howled with glee with RDJ got Tony Stark, because come on. Tony Stark is an addicted screw-up who finally got his crap together and then turned out to be awesome. He does autobiographical superhero movies! On the other hand, having seen Chris Evans in mostly comic roles, I had my doubts about him as Steve Rogers, but he just radiated decency and compassion all over the screen even as he was kicking Nazi ass.

**I'm a child of the late nineties, the first Green Lantern that I knew was John Stewart, and he's stuck with me ever since as the Green Lantern, no impostors need apply, even though I know that Hal Jordan came first. I don't talk about representation/erasure a whole lot around here, mostly because I think that it's more productive to fill the gap than to bitch about it, but: it matters.

And because I absolutely cannot resist something shiny and have the bank statements to prove it...

0/15 books

Let the end of the world commence, with as many bangs and whimpers as we damned well please. Direct link here.

EDIT: Oh, and a quick note on the tag. I'm a wiseass, can't really help it. It's not a commentary on any book, movie, or television show reviewed here.

The Traitorous Confessions of a Former DC Fangirl

I've had a pretty bad week, ladies and gents, for reasons that aren't particularly relevant on what I am still determined shall be a professional blog. (IT WILL, DAMN IT.) What could possibly be a better distraction for me than a couple of margaritas, some friends, and a Big Dumb Fun Movie? Especially when it's wearing a red cape and a bratty grin that ought to require a license?

That's right. I went to see Thor, and I loved the hell out of it. Why the subject line, you ask? See, I'm a DC girl, always have been and until very recently thought that I always would be. I once wrote a song about Frank Miller. (I can't remember the lyrics now, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that they probably involved whores.) I can write you a ten-page paper comparing and contrasting various Supermans (Supermen?) without even cracking a book. (Tom Welling is awesome, haters to the left.) I might be able to rattle off a half-dozen Marvel characters if I concentrate hard and am allowed to count the X-Men as individuals rather than a unit, but more and more I've come to look forward to the newest Marvel superhero extravaganza while dreading DC's next effort. There are three reasons for this.

Narrative cohesion. The same way that a book picks up speed in its final chapters, Marvel is pushing towards one massive (if probably not final, because no one is walking away from this franchise while there's still profit to be made) event in The Avengers. Each movie is keeps this in mind, makes references to others in the franchise, and shares a visual style. I can't imagine Nolan's Gotham existing in the same universe as Singer's Metropolis, let alone characters crossing over. Apparently, the DC folks can't imagine it, either, if Supes is now also going to be headed by Nolan, but, well… let's say that my hopes when it comes to the next Superman have been steadily diminishing.

Fun. Thor was a blast to watch in large part because everyone involved was clearly having the time of their lives and realized that "deep" (and believe it or not, the flick has its moments) doesn't have to mean "unremittingly grim." Marvel superhero movies as a whole seem to get this, actually, from the quick dialogue to the bright filters used in filming. I'm still holding out hope for The Green Lantern, but that's mostly because Ryan Reynolds can't not be a smartass. He does not understand how. I didn't realize what an adorable dork Brandon Routh once until I stumbled across his Funny or Die videos. Come on, DC. To quote one of your most memorable characters: why so serious?

And finally, Marvel has started to embrace a fact that DC can't quite seem to grasp: girls like superheroes, too. It's at its most blatant thus far in Thor, which has several moments of female gaze seeded throughout, and it also looks as if it's also going to play a role in Captain America. (The trailer here features a shot of the female lead struggling very hard not to grab at Chris Evans's pecs. You and me both, sister.) Looking back, while Thor is the most explicitly lady-friendly Marvel venture to date, none of their offerings are unfriendly, either. Shots of Pepper's cleavage are matched with Tony selling copious tickets to the gun show. Meanwhile (and apologies to the fanboys and fangirls that this is going to piss off, but it's true), Chris Nolan has never met a female lead that he couldn't fridge and thinks that Batgirl is so ridiculous (while dressing up as a giant flying rat rather than getting a Celexa prescription happens every day) that he'll invent a son for Commissioner Gordon to bond with rather than showing Barbara's civilian self. Zack Snyder made certain that the climactic moment of heroism in Sucker Punch involved submitting to a gang rape. If Lois Lane makes it out of the next Superman movie alive, without being sexually assaulted, and also without a brand-new set of Kryptonite nipple piercings? I'm going to be over the moon. Comics and comics fandom have long been spaces where male characters overwhelmingly hold sway. (Hey, I'm working on it!) Marvel, however, has realized that half the human race is female and that they can make more money by appealing across genders. Quite apart from making me all fuzzy inside, that's just good business sense, and I wish them all the luck in the world.

Besides, Thor's just a damned good movie. It's funny, it's well-acted by charismatic leads, and seriously, Mr. Hemsworth, it has to be said: yowza.

Thoughts on Scream 4

In which I had to fight very hard with myself not to yell "[Expletive] YEAH FINAL GIRLS!" over and over again.

It's a perfect day to swan dramatically about the moors.

Hasn't stopped raining and thundering since about six this morning, and I've actually had to turn on my heat. I don't think that the new Jane Eyre is showing in my city yet, or this would be good weather for it. (Oh, Jaime Bell, the things that I do for you.)

I was planning on seeing the newest Scream offering with a friend yesterday, only to be felled by a truly hideous sinus headache that was the harbinger of the storm wailing and stomping outside my window right now. A shame that our schedules won't align today for a second go at it, because I am so in the mood for a good Final Girl right now. In the meantime, I suppose I should, you know, write a bit and justify my existence or something (I've only done 700 words today, that's pathetic), but weather like this nearly sucks out your will to live.

Ice Twisters might be the greatest movie of this or any other universe.

Yes. Yes, I am telling you, Gentle Reader, that it might even be better than Sharktopus.

Except for the part where I can't quite tell if one of the female characters is the hero's daughter or his love interest. That is a fairly important distinction to make.