Tag Archives: movies

Jessica Alba, Sue Storm and the wisdom of experience

Comics

I was all set to write a post about how stupid both the thesis and supporting arguments of this USA Today story are, when I checked the comments section of the story, and noticed the folks there did my work for me. Using Catwoman and Elektra to say that comic fans don’t like women in hero mode is like saying the poor sales of Crystal Pepsi and Van Halen III mean that soda and rock and roll are on the wane. But there’s little use in me throwing another log on that fire, so thanks for stealing my thunder, Internet. And way to figure out the new media, USA Today. Jerks.

Frankly, I’d be the first one to trumpet Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer as the herald (ahem) of a new age of women-centered hero films if it weren’t for the fact that Jessica Alba’s Sue Storm isn’t the heart of this team and there’s little the actress can do about it. For now.

This isn’t to say that the fault lies with who Alba is. She’s a decent actress in the right role; her Nancy Callahan in Sin City is the kind of woman that men would kill for, and Dark Angel gave Alba a role that allowed her to deliver a mix of poutiness and sass, backed with a sharp boot heel. It’s fair to say she was born to play Max.

But Sue Storm is a mother figure in a family of super heroes. And while Alba has many charms, projecting a maternal instinct isn’t one of them. She gives off the air of a woman who’s still taking in the world – no crime there for a woman in her mid 20s – but the role requires someone who’s able to suggest with her eyes that she’s seen enought to know what’s right for her boys. If anyone, it’s Michael Chiklis’ Ben Grimm who carries the right amount of world-weariness on his shoulders to be the team’s moral compass.

Despite Scott Knowles’s protestations to the contrary, the only thing that’s woman-centered about Surfer is that there’s a woman in it, surrounded by men. Can Alba’s Sue Storm hold her own in the ass-kicking department? Sure. But she isn’t gifted with the Athenian wisdom necessary to carry the role. Not yet.

Speaking of which, I’m on record with saying that a certain female super hero should be given her due. If Scott Bowles’s article can make it easier to get Wonder Woman a green light, I’ll forgive him his blindness. I’m just hoping he’s not in charge of casting the thing.

Video vulgarity hilarity

Uncategorized,

This first clip is via the gents at Filmspotting, an excellent movie review podcast I’ve been lucky enough to co-host with Adam Kempenaar on the rare occasions when his excellent partner-in-film Sam VanHallgren has been out of town. It’s got local boy Adam McKay and Will Ferrell facing down Ferrell’s hellacious landlord.

And then there’s this not-safe-for-work-unless-you’ve-got-
headphones clip, which had me laughing so hard today that it felt like my face was melting like that Nazi at the end of Raiders. Oddly enough, it’s rather instructive.

Hitting the walls and working the middle, indeed.

Welcome geeks and nerds! I am your people.

Comics,

Hi, Chicagoist readers. You’ll find the main page of the blog here and more comics content here.

Looking through some referral logs today, I discovered that a decent handful of people are finding this site when searching Technorati for “oblivion.” Rather than individuals who’ve got an obsession with the end of the world, I surmise these are instead people who are searching for information on The Elder Scrolls IV video game.

Sorry, dudes.* Not here. Just posts about songs of the 80s.

But it’s not as if there isn’t reason enough for you to stick around. Between posts on Tarantino, Captain America and uh…Van Halen, there’s plenty here to keep you entertained. Sometimes I even bury a Halo joke in a hyperlink within the post. Like an easter egg.

Speaking of comics, I’m starting to wonder if Joss Whedon leaving the Wonder Woman movie project is the worst thing to happen to the character since Frederic Wertham.

Wonder Woman’s history – both in and out of comics – is flat-out remarkable if for no other reason but the inspiration for William Moulton Marston’s character came from both his wife and the woman with whom they were in a polyamorous relationship (a detail which I’m sure has made it into someone’s fanfic story). Though a founding member of the Justice League of America and a part of the Golden Age of comics, she didn’t become truly iconic until the 1970s when she regained her original origin story, and rose as a torchbearer for feminists. Not coincidentally, she was given the small-screen treatment around this time as well.

I grew up in a house of almost all women, women have been some of my closest friends, and – from time to time – I find myself in romantic situations with women. And I know all of them thought Wonder Woman was pretty awesome at one time or another. So great was the impact of Lynda Carter‘s portrayal, I’m willing to say that 90% of the women I knew in my age cohort had Wonder Woman Underoos (nevermind the impact she had on men in my age cohort).

Recently, DC has re-positioned the character as one of the Big Three, along with Superman and Batman. She’s on equal footing with both, and is in the middle of (and still reeling from) storylines fraught with questions of identity, responsibility and the consequences of a life of duty. It’s heady stuff, and with author Jodi Picoult taking a turn at writing duties, the character is due for a renaissance.

And that’s why the worst thing in the world is for Joss Whedon to leave the project.

Whedon’s probably the best person alive to bring Wonder Woman to the screen. He’s shown a deft hand in navigating the comic world whether handling characters of his own creation (Fray and his Buffy “Season 8” series on Dark Horse, which is so fantastic that I want to light myself on fire) or those entrusted to him (Amazing X-Men). His dialogue mixes equal parts of humor and pathos, while staying true to the characters despite the creative freedom he’s given.

Whedon’s also a master at writing for women. Most impressive is his ability to write strong, smart, independent women who are sexual, but not pandering. They’re not flawless women, but they’re human beings, driven by equal parts mind and heart, which is a rare find in mass entertainment.

Of course, all this makes Whedon a rusty gear in the machine of movie-making.

His original Buffy film is…an interesting failure, for reasons that aren’t Whedon’s own. Serenity was a solid film – though hindered by trying to serve both die-hards and newbies – that didn’t do as well as many expected. His scripts for other films have often been chewed-up and spit back out at him. Like Kevin Smith, he works best not in mass-market films but in boutique pictures that serve a particular audience.

So it’s little surprise that Whedon left the Wonder Woman project, which is destined to be a big-budget film with a star heavy on recognition but light on salary and time commitments (if Katharine McPhee or Anne Hathaway doesn’t end up in the title role, I’ll really be surprised), that will undoubtedly suck so hard, it will make The Fantastic Four seem like The Seventh Seal. It’s film-making by committee as opposed to filmmaker as auteur, and not an environment suited to the man’s talents (or fussiness).

Too bad, really. It’s been 30 years since Wonder Woman’s last bout of iconography. Give the lady her due.

* This is not sexist. It’s just fact. If people were finding this site as a result of a search for “Legend of Zelda” or “The Sims” then you’d have a point. But “The Elder Scrolls?” Come on.

And only 10 years after kids on AOL figured it out

Internet,


Woah, really MySpace? An answer to the mystery? Um, again?

But I bit anyway, just to see if he confirmed it, and found the most galling thing about the whole tease. At the moment of the reveal, the video supposedly melts away as if were a cheap reel exposed to the light of a projector.

So galling that I’m not even going to post a link to it. You’ll thank me later, when you have an extra two minutes in your life that you wouldn’t have had before, having wasted it to watch little more than a promo clip.

An unexpected error, indeed.