A Femnist Rant in 2 Parts

I'd like to start this off by saying, I'm glad I didn't see the Time Traveler's Wife before I read the book. As the book is a philosophical beautiful moment in time using science fiction to weave a story of two real people and the love that they share.

Whereas the movie is what male directors and male screen writers and male writers in general can do to women characters and female books.

Second to point out is that I dropped DC comics a year back, because after 52, Didio and the rest of the she-hating men in the comics department insisted on making the already unbalanced female comic heroes worse when women were actually starting to become a big influx of readership. The cornerstone being basically a vagina shot of Mary Marvel.

I could go into certain issues that have always been there and made worse lately, such as the costumes. How none of them actually think about what is logical for a crime fighter and instead think about where to show tits and ass. Where so many flying heroes wear skirts and panties. Where Huntress is constantly overly sexualized in her costume with short-shorts that make no sense for someone who's used to be shot at. I could go into the inequality in the medium for female writers doing female books. That Birds of Prey didn't always have a female pen to it. That Spoiler was basically raped and murdered, only to have that whole ordeal that has been put into much discussion and nothing really done about it.

It's like everything is slipping backwards.

The Time Traveler's Wife is a marriage between the characters of Henry and Clare. They bothtogether. And where Henry's other selves from other timelines played into it more.

It's the fact that the male screen writer had no clue what the book was about, ignored it and wrote a schmaltzy piece that he hoped would bring in the chicks. It was that they had some of the best people to play the roles and the dialog was already on the pages and yet changed it, simply for the assurance of women being overly emotional, stupid, and the men just drifting.

I had issues with the book, which had much to do with an issue of it focusing on Henry and sort of skipping over Clare at one point, but it was nothing compared to the film. Clare was never demonized, subtly or not, in the book. She knew what she was getting into.

But apparently that was too much for an audience to handle, because we need women crying about their life, being manipulative in a two-wrongs don't make a right situation, and dumb as bricks as a child to trust a crazy naked man coming up to them.

I'm not saying that some of these issues wouldn't have shown up with a female screen writer, or that a female writer is required for this type of thing. Or even a female director. But it'd be nice. Or maybe grabbing some of those few men who actually understand the source material and writing it up. Those men out there who wouldn't feel the need to completely underscore the meaning of the book and give it a flair that they predict women will like.

Stop underestimating your audiences. People are only as stupid as the studios expect them to be. As the screen writers or the directors expect them to be. Men can handle a strong female character. Having one does nothing to detract from the male character at all. If anything it makes the men stronger. It makes it more real, more vibrant, just more.

In that fact of matter, give Stephanie Brown, give Cassandra Cain to male writers who can handle her. Or let a female writer take over a female book. Because you know they're never going to let them touch Batman. His penis might fall off.

Women characters in comic books become strong, not through the direct influence of their creators most of the time, but through amazing luck. Catwoman could have been and was at times the most sexist tripe ever (Halle Berry's version very much summed it up), but she's gone through growth and change that has made her a invertible landmine of strong influences.

Batgirl wasn't a strong female character. Barbara Gordon was. Batgirl was a throwaway. There was no Batboy. There was Batman and Robin. The girl at the end of her moniker which she wore far into her adulthood until she was brutally fridged (and became more awesome out of that, only because Babs is and the character can survive) - and then Batgirl was made amazing by Cassandra Cain. A character in her own right that could have been ruined (as many Cassie's have been), but at first came out of the box kicking. She was silent, a basic smack you in the face representation of how female characters are treated in comics, but she could kick your ass. A sign of her potential.

So what happens to her? She gets brainwashed, ignored, turned evil for no good reason, ignored, and then who the hell knows what happened next?

Her spot gets taken over by Robin.

By a character who straight out of the box proved every thing that those bastards have grinded down wrong. Stephanie Brown came straight out of the box, awesome, written by a male writer. She was Spoiler, a girl with a costume that made sense, who had an attitude and an actual sense of self. There were things that happened to her, but they didn't break her down, she grew from the. She had more determination than any other character I could ever think of, especially ones turned away by Batman - who basically represented THE MAN.

And then she was Robin. And for a glorious moment all that was achieved was perfection. Stephanie was a great Robin. She had the best qualities and skills of Dick, Tim, and Jason and even her own play with Cassandra. She was a great fighter (took down a pretty kick ass assassin after Cass was still reeling from the effect of Lady Shiva), had a mind of her own, and basically was everything Robin should be.

So she was of course, beaten, tortured, and then promptly shelved, forgotten about, used as Tim angst, and never really treated like she was Robin at all.

So no, I don't think making her Batgirl is making up for any of this shit. I think Batgirl is a crappy character. I think it's just another example of little miss sidekick in her short skirt not quite sexy and villainous enough to be Catwoman, but ready to bake cookies and be shoved into a refrigerator.

Cassandra Cain is a great character. Barbara mother f-cking Gordon is a great character. Stephanie Brown is a great character.

Batgirl is a token that we get thrown at the end of the day.

So no, I don't accept it as the throwaway consolation prize, just like I don't accept you completely ruining a perfectly good book in an adaptation that could have easily been handled well - but instead was twisted, not for time constraints, but for fueling the kind of drama that you think female audiences will not only agree with but understand.

I still want that 50/50 thing boys, some of you even get that. But right now, we're barely at 20/80 and you still think we're getting too much.

Once Batwoman starts crushing jaws through Gotham, while Batboy swings alongside waiting for the next female writer to completely destroy their character.

Then. Then we'll be even. Because we'll both be at zero. Maybe then at least, you'll have even a clue as to what we're feeling and what we're talking about. get a part. They both have conversations and developments. In the film, Henry was the focus. And his proximity to Clare not only had no meaning, but so much dialog was taken needlessly out of scenes that Clare appeared either dumb or manipulative, no matter what Rachel McAdams did with her. Ignoring the idiotic movements that made the film hard to understand at points and scene changes that ruined characters (Richard, Gomez, Clare's dad, the Doctor). It was the addition of scenes such as Clare calling the situation a cheat to get her into it from Henry's perspective, where she had only understanding in the book, because they'd both been through a terrible situation. Where a decision was made

From RomCom, to ComRom - The Proposal

The Proposal, starring the undeniably charming and funny Ryan Reynolds and awesome lady extraordinaire Sandra Bullock is a romantic comedy with a simple, probably overused premise - mean lady, nice man, thrown together, hilarity ensues with smoochies.

The specifics being that when Bullock's character, a sharp minded editor of a publishing house is about to be deported back to Canada, she convinces Reynolds into marrying her so that she can stay in the country.

I wasn't expecting much out of this movie, because Romantic Comedies tend to follow a certain path of standard stuff. Tension leads to quiet commonalities, which leads to romance, which leads to some kind of conflict dealing with previous tension, which leads to resolution, which leads to smoochies. But that's kind of what you have to deal with, it's a RomCom, it's going to have some of the details of a RomCom. If it didn't, it would be in another genre.

The thing that was different about The Proposal, is that instead of focusing on the romance, it focuses on the comedy aspect (in a non-vulgar kind of way). It's still a female driven movie, in the sense of it having a female character in it, but it's not cookie cutter. There are different shades.

Sandra Bullock's character is a bitch. But not in the way that a female Simon Cowell would be. More in the empowering sense of the term. She scares her subordinates, but it's made clear that her assistant (Reynolds) and her bosses really respect her. She gets the job done. In an early scene when she talks down to another employee, he kind of deserves it. He was lazy and she ended up getting the job done for him. And especially in Publishing, with the kind of severance he was offered, she was ridiculously nice to him. (Two months to find a job in any economy is gracious indeed, but with a career field that has such a high turnover rate - it's next to sainthood).

So when she shows her sensitivity, it's through awkwardness and not thrown in your face. Not once does her character give a long speech about why she is the way she is, because of having no social life and focusing on work. Nor does she ever apologize for it. She shouldn't have to. It's only through the development and the friendship she creates with the family and with Reynolds that these things come out.

Oh and it helps that Betty White was hilarious as a 90 year old Gammy.

The romance develops, but not in big sweeping gestures and grandiose speeches, but in simple interactions and conversations. It is almost a realistic development surrounded by unrealistic circumstances which gives the movie it's premise.

The cast helped a lot too. Many of the lines could have been pulled off by anyone but Reynolds, and Bullock made a likable character from the beginning, even with her rough edges.

All in all, I'd probably put The Proposal as one of those RomComs who made it past the frame of what they're supposed to be and became more, but with subtleties rather than sweeping changes. It was a good film, I laughed very hard in a fair amount of places and said "aww" in quite a few parts (along with the rest of the audience).

All the good of RomComs and none of the bad.

If you've got a kid, bolt to the theatre--

Bolt (PG)

Everyone seems to make a big deal when John Travolta makes a movie, no matter what it is. Even Battlefield Earth (which I'm still trying forget), so paired with Hannah Montana, Bolt was properly hyped.

A cute, new concept, Bolt is about a dog that has been cloistered on a set of a television show about the same dog having super powers and saving his "person" Penny (Miley Cyrus), having no idea that he is just a normal dog (so that the emotions on the dog are real). During an attempt by the network to get better ratings, a cliffhanger is left where Bolt is convinced Penny is actually captured and breaks free of the set.

I've been wary of Disney movies of late, but since the Pixar merge, the animation story lines seem to be improving (though I wish they wouldn't completely give up on traditional animation). Bolt proved that the merge has been working, because is has enough entertainment value for kids and their parents.

Bolt ties himself to a cat Mittens (Susie Essman) believing she is the agent of Dr. Calico () the evil fiend who captured Penny. Mittens, is just an alley cat, who is now tied to a crazy dog and is one of the more witty parts of the film. Although she did have one moment where she claimed all cats wanted to be dogs, which anyone who owned a cat would find laughable. They're later joined by a brave hamster in a ball named Rhino (Mark Walton) who has seen Bolt on the magic box and thinks he's real.

The thing that really puts Bolt over the edge is just the general care and detail about dogs and how they behave. It will really hit with not only dog lovers, but any children. There's something enjoyable to get out of this film, even while some six year old is kicking the back of your chair.

Not so curious after all--

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (PG-13)

It is no surprise that most people went to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, because they were curious. A movie about a man growing younger instead of older in a post World War I New Orleans is a bit of an oddity in itself.

A beautiful piece of filmmaking, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is very visual, but misses the entire point of its own story. The film starts off as Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt) is left at a rest home and taken in by one of the caretakers. So an elderly infant is left with elderly people, an interesting commentary and concept. Unsurprisingly the movie focuses on time and the passage of it (brought more succinctly in the small prologue about a blind man and a backwards clock expressing his grief about lost sons in World War I).

As he grows he is stuck in the body of an old man, but clearly has the mentality of his actual age, which his main love interest Daisy Fuller (Cate Blanchett) seems to notice immediately when she meets the young/old Benjamin. The movie wants to be a love story between the carefree, effervescent Daisy (who utterly shines in this role) and Benjamin, but it falls flat. Instead of putting together a series of highlights from a couple in love, it instead settles for much more sex (nothing graphic, however) than you'd expect from this type of film.

Pitt and Blanchett have fair chemistry, so I think I'll lay this at the feet of the writing where most of the problems lie. The directing is beautiful and all the acting is a solid good (excluding Blanchett who is superb), but the writing doesn't seem to know what to do with itself. The Curious Case is making a statement, an obvious statement, that time isn't meant to be wasted - yet that is what the film seems to do. A few characters that should be important (Benjamin's surrogate father, his sister, and his and Daisy's daughter) seem to only be in the periphery.

One of the films biggest mistake in regards to this "time wasted" message is that Benjamin does just that, after he's supposedly learned this message. In an act of supposedly self-sacrifice he instead does something immensely selfish and loses (and takes from his loved ones) years of good years because of his fear of growing younger.

Another flaw in this movie is that Benjamin doesn't actually grow younger. In appearance he does regress in age, but in mentality it is a normal development. This is not a different view of the world in terms of living backwards (like Merlin in Arthurian legend), but a physical deformity.

In short, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is another one of those glorious big budget art films that tries too hard to have a message, and yet has no message at all. Blanchett has a wonderful performance, and some of the side characters light up the screen, but overall the writing brings it down too much and in the end the only thing I was curious about was when the movie was going to stop.

Marley is heartfelt, but I still wouldn't want that dog--

Marley & Me (PG)

It's hard to understand why the person who cried like a baby at the Fox and the Hound would intentionally see a movie where (spoiler) the dog dies at the end, but I'm glad I did. Not to say there weren't an array of tissues spilled over the empty popcorn tray by the end of it, but I'm kind of a wuss when it comes to animal (don't even get me started on the sobfest that was 8 Below).

Marley and Me is a tale of life between a newly married couple John Grogan (Owen Wilson) and Jenny (Jennifer Aniston) with the time line of their terror of a Labrador Marley (named after the famous Bob). It is based on the real life of John Grogan and the real terror of a dog that he based his column and later book around.

Some of the draw for seeing the film (other than the chance to ogle an adorable puppy reeking havoc for the first twenty minutes) was Jennifer Aniston, who hasn't been in a memorable movie since the ill-fated turn in The Good Girl (which I'm still not sure if I liked or hated). I had a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of her and Wilson as a couple, but they not only managed to make that work, but I actually liked Owen Wilson as the protagonist (something I have trouble with in every film he's been in).

I'm not sure if part of this is his change, since the recent suicide rumors last year, or if the writing was just more attributed to his character (rather than the one sided flop as part of Wedding Crashers - not everyone can be Vince Vaughn). Wilson as John takes us through mostly his view of development as he and his wife (and eventually three children) raise this rambunctious dog.

Marley is a horrible dog, one I'm not sure even I could put up with, but just like the Grogans the audience will easily fall in love with him. It's clear that even through his terrorizing house-sitters and delivery men, not to mention the couch, Marley is all heart.

It's a heartfelt film and hard to dislike with Marley's crazy antics that would seem less funny if they were happening to you. The only downside is a slightly cut off ending that should have summed up where John Grogan was with his life, not just when it pertained to Marley. Because one of the things that really makes the film is that it is a story about a man with a dog. Not just a dog.

A highlight of the Holiday movie season, I would recommend Marley and Me, because it goes into exactly what you want this time of year. It's a great family film, has serious laughs, a solid look at family, and a tearful, heartfelt ending.

How-To Write Video Game Reviews

(Written for my Spring 2008 Review Writing Class)

How-To Write Video Game Reviews

The trick about writing video game reviews is that the audience mostly likely has the intention of purchasing the games written about and a very short attention span to read about them. That is why video game reviews have to be succinct and entertaining. There is almost always a rating system and the best of these rating systems have a list of requirements (Concept, Graphics, Sound, Playability, Entertainment, Replay value, etc) that are listed, rated and given a small explanation as to why. This means getting to a point and really driving home what the buying audience needs to hear. If the game is riddled with bugs and things that are going to hinder game play than that needs to be upfront in the review. It is so important for the reviewer to be honest about the evaluation of the game, because many of their readers do actually go out and buy these games – and if they find the game to be substandard without any warning they might drop those reviews.

A good opening is always warranted to draw a reader in, in any type of review, but with Video Games there are so many reviews out there if a reader doesn’t have direct interest in a game s/he might just drop the review if the opening doesn’t have any punch. A particularly bad game usually leaves room for humor, as seen in Jeremy Dunham’s review on IGN of Super Rub-a-Dub:

“Spoiler alert! In George Clooney's 2005 political drama Syriana, his undercover alter ego Bob Barnes was the subject of a brutal torture scene. During the disturbing sequence, the captured CIA agent is repeatedly punched in the face before having several of his fingernails ripped out via pliers. It's a terrible moment for sure and, while drawing parallels between that kind of pain and what it's like to play Super Rub-a-Dub isn't fair to victims of such inhumanity, you shouldn't lose the metaphor -- it applies.”

Exaggeration to start with and a sense of drama works with the audience and this quote draws out a real torture scene from a current movie and applies it to the fact that the game was so horrible. Not only is it drawing it is very effective and the potential buyer is going to think twice about picking up this game if it elicited such a strong reaction from the reviewer.

It is also important to shift the review to the tone of the game itself. A game rated M for Mature can have swear words in it or violent epithets to connect with the audience, but a game about the latest Mario game should rethink that approach and limit any strong language to fricking sweet.

The reviewer also has to make the point clear about the verdict of the video game, whether that is in a rating system or in the review itself (usually the review itself needs a clear conclusion either way). The clarity has to be accompanied by reasons and also an enthusiasm one way or the other beyond It was good (baring that the game isn’t mediocre, then the reviewer takes on that tone). Kristan Reed of Eurogamer reviewing Bioshock attempted to relay her point about the entirety of the review in this paragraph setting up for the rest of the review:

“So to have any shred of doubt surrounding BioShock comprehensively swept away within the first ten minutes, well, you feel like dancing. You want to tell people about this game who you know won't even care, just because it makes you so giddy inside. Before we get into the nitty gritty, here’s the deal: Bioshock doesn't just meet your expectations, but completely redefines them forever in ways you never even expected - in ways that games used to in the past, routinely.”

Reed even narrowed down her opinion with a qualifier about really narrowing it down.

The voice of video game reviews are always casual. It is a well-informed person giving a concrete opinion of a game, but it could be over a couple of sodas and an Xbox. It is important to keep this personal tone, because that is what the audience is drawn to – a more academic tone will leave the readers bored and questioning the validity of the reviewer. A good example is Robert Workman review in Game Daily of Oddworld Stranger’s Wrath, where he uses casual language, slang abbreviations and a commonality sense of knowing the top-popular games: “One: just too darn quirky and not really as accessible as it deserved to be. Two: Halo came out the same day. 'Nuff said.” There is a sense of the audience already being knowledgeable about the systems, the reviewer cannot dumb down things within the genre (everyone reading will know what Halo is, what RPGs are, and most big companies within video games like Rockstar and Lucasarts). If the audience’s understanding of a certain subject is in question, the reviewer should briefly touch on it without focusing on that so that no reader feels s/he is being talked down to.

It is very important for a review to be descriptive. Video games are a very visual medium (it is in the name) and it is important to relay that sense of visual understanding into the reviews. Descriptive, salient details are required to really draw a reader into a game and make them understand what the reviewer has seen and visually played out. Ben Reeves of Game Informer reviewed Turok with a good sense of dramatization and style: “You’ll see a T-rex shove over a few trees and your stomach will drop as he comes at you, dry swallowing any small creatures that get in his way like they were meat candy.” There are a lot of very grabbing, interesting words meat candy especially.

It is not just description for style, however, it is also the importance of getting a good feel for the game play. The reviewer needs to set up a sense of credibility that they have played this game thoroughly and that the reader can step in with some sense of what is happening in the game. This is especially important, because of the buyer’s audience – the buyers want description of what is in the game so they can decide whether it is worth the $30-70 of un-returnable merchandise. Aaron Thomas of GameSpot in his review of Sega Superstars leaves a very good trail marker of how the game is set up in each section, something very important for a game with mini-games and separate sections:

“Many of these missions are really fun, and some of them are especially creative. In the Virtua Squad minigames, you shoot (aim the ball at) the bad-guy targets that pop up while trying to avoid hitting the civilians, just as you would in Virtua Cop. In Puyo Pop Fever, you're essentially playing the actual puzzle game and clearing the Puyo with tennis balls. […] The only knock against these stages is that the game doesn't do much in the way of explaining the gameplay, so if you've never played ChuChu Rocket before, you're going to be clueless as to how to proceed here. […] But even with these issues, game mode is an entertaining and enjoyable way to play tennis.”

It is important to see how he spreads judgment in with his descriptions. This applies to all the points of good video game reviews, it gets the point across quickly, the style is casual, and it’s descriptive enough for a buying audience to be involved in.

Even though the style is casual, the video game review is a complicated process and a very important one for the economy of that specific market.

Sources:

Gamespot Review

EuroGamer Review

Gamedaily Review

IGN Review

Game Informer Review

Left without a Climax: The Incredibly Unrealized Potential of Neil Gaiman’s Stardust

(Written for my Spring 2008 Review Writing Class)

Stardust
By Neil Gaiman
248 pages. HarperCollins Publishers. $13.95

Left without a Climax: The Incredibly Unrealized Potential of Neil Gaiman’s Stardust

Queen Victoria is reigning, still in her youth; Dickens is writing and publishing Oliver Twist; Mr. Morse is finally done fiddling with that code of his; and Mr. Draper has caught the moon on camera. All of which is of no importance to a small little town, too far from London to walk, on the edges of a long wall which borders the lands of Faerie. The town, aptly called ‘Wall,’ holds a man named Dunstan Thorn who gets to know the locals of Faerie a little too closely during the nine-a-year fair. And nine months later gets his own package; a son, Tristan Thorn, the hero of this tale, a boy from both worlds.

Fantastical with a starting jolt of humorous irony is just what one would expect when cracking open a Neil Gaiman book and in the land of Wall and Faerie, there is no disappointment on that front. In Stardust, the town of Wall is very country and as commonly described as Faerie is whimsically and so the hero of the tale Tristan is just as so. He is a young boy of seventeen remarkably stupid in love with a woman who has no interest in him. Even in this possibly dull setting with an exceptionally familiar situation, Gaiman’s prose manages to capture the reader into his spell. This does not stop throughout the rest of the novel and if prose alone would make a masterpiece, Gaiman would have one on his hands. “Victoria Forester [Tristan’s object of affection] laughed at the skinny shop-boy, laughed long and loud and delightfully, and her tinkling laughter followed him back down the hill, and away.” The reader will feel the rhythm and movement of the words, but be so enraptured with it and never notice the mechanics involved. Tristan’s quick plight where he ends up promising Victoria to get her a star that fell out of the sky, an idea that even Victoria (the rational, logical, and somewhat catty) finds laughable. Tristan being completely enamored and stupefied by love goes off beyond the wall to find the star. But the star landed in Faerie, and in Faerie all is not what it seems and Tristan soon finds that the star is a stubbornly beautiful woman who is more than a little pissed that she had just been knocked out of the sky. Tristan, unhindered by the fact that she is not bits of rock, decides to bring her to Victoria anyway.

The star, named Yvaine is not dreadfully pleased with this idea either and Tristan is not the only one after her. In one of two subplots that artfully come together, the royalty of Faerie filled with a cast of fratricidical Princes who in the grand tradition of the recently deceased King are set to all at once, kill their brothers and capture the stone which Yvaine wears and which consequently (by the dying King) knocked her out of the sky. Three witches are also after Yvaine, hoping to eat her heart and regain their power and youth. These plots intertwine as one and the tension mounts and builds up as they perfectly fold into one another and meet up with the main plot. Tristan has some troubles before and after that and proves his bad taste in women and manners does not apply to the earnest nature of his heart as he slowly grows on Yvaine.

The plot is whimsical, funny, and easily adaptable to children and adults alike if not for a few placed adult words and themes that could easily be removed for bedtime stories. Still catching onto the fantasy steeled in real experience that Gaiman is so crafted at, Stardust manages to lighten in evocative prose as well as plot, to be more diversely enjoyable. This novel would be near perfect, except with all the mounting tension and build up to a climax – there is none. Stardust, in still completely entrancing prose, tapers off into walking and discussing things with Deux Ex Machina of the balloon losing air kind. The subplots do not achieve the grand conclusion they deserve and Tristan and Yvaine come to sensible ends with no real tension involved, something of quaintly ever after. There is something to be said for the quietness of the ending and epilogue, which may have be better achieved with Gaiman’s usual medium of graphic novels – but what instead occurs is the reader left feeling swindled after they finally come down off the sweetly affective prose high. It seems to be easily solved if Gaiman were to instead of summarizing a large portion of Tristan and Yvaine’s journey (all of which sounds interesting and easily readable) that he would write this out in the same manner as the rest novel. Then perhaps the reader would reach the tapering slow conclusions as the characters have and not feel so shafted by their sudden decisions and less than dramatic plot wrap-ups. Unfortunately the promise and artistry of the writing and plot of Stardust leaves the taste of the ending ultimately bitter and stale.

Neil Gaiman’s Stardust manages to be all at once enjoyable and effortlessly readable, but where it could have been exceptional easily with a hundred more pages, it manages (with a lightened ending and stilted climax) to be just slightly above average. Maybe that is good enough for Gaiman, but with light and airy prose, it was not quite good enough for me.