Apparently, White Wolf agrees with me. And they *weren’t* informed in advance. Naughty hollywood. Naughty *naughty* Sony Pictures.

Where I’m worried, is the part where I really want to see this movie. It’s looking so damm good, and it’s coming out the weekend of my flipping birthday.

So, guys? Kiss and make up. Sony, pay White Wolf their royalty check, and release this sucker on time. Please?

And it’s an actual, gods honest, professionally made mini movie. How cool is that?

Underworld is coming out in September. Looks like a kick ass movie. It *also* looks a hell of a lot like it’s borrowing liberally from White Wolf’s Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse.

Very cool.

Irregardless of what most everyone is saying, T3 didn’t do anything for me. The story didn’t really break new ground and felt like a cop out when held up against the first two ventures. Yes, the blowing up of shit was nice, and the obligatory showing-up-naked scenes were cute, but as for the story itself? I had it called after the first 15 miniutes, and I really don’t like being able to do that. It makes everything else just… boring. (Though the RoboCop shout out, in the form of the T-1’s, was cute.)

LXG, on the other hand, rocked my socks off. Everyone associated with the project might have had a lousy time making it, but I had a *lot* of fun watching it. Yes, they divereged from the book in several places, but the changes worked. Well, most of them. I would have liked to see Quatermain as the bitter, opium addicted sot we see in the beginning of the book. On the other hand, I *loved* Dorian Gray. (And if you’ve read the book, his fate shouldn’t be much of a suprise. He’s not a nice man. Not even a little bit.) Forget about the immortality thing, he wielded the power of the smirk and the snark better than anyone since Methos.

And Peta Wilson? Looks great as a brunette.

In spite of being burned by TNT’s last attempt at historical drama, I thought I’d give this one a go round. On first glance, it very pretty (and damm, is Chris Noth aging well!), but also very condensed. Rather like reading the condensed cliffs notes of the late roman republic. For the length of time that this thing is supposed to cover (Sulla through Ceasear’s death, I believe) it sould be about the length of I, Cladius.

After part one, I have no *major* gripes, but I am realizing that knowing the history it’s all based on spoils things a bit. (As soon as someone gives their name, I can tell you how they die. The fact that it all *actually happened* makes this a touch depressing.) As for historical accuracy… eh. They’re getting it close enough that I’m not going to quibble. (Well, not right now, at any rate.)

And I was prepared to be critical. We’re talking about one of my very first comic book loves. (Not my fault the school library had a big hardbound collection of the early issues…) So lets get on to the good, not so good, and the super spiffy.

• The scene transitions were too self conscious and artsy. When *how* the story is being told is occuping more of my time than what the story is actually *telling*, there’s a problem.
• Cameos! (Stan Lee and Lou Ferrigno no less… hee!) And, erm, Gavin. (For the Angel fen out there)
• Eric Bana’s performance wasn’t “wooden”. That’s the way the character was supposed to be. They even devoted exposition time to beating us over the head with that fact.
• And speaking of getting beaten over the head, Ang Lee needs to take lessons in subtle from Marti Noxon. Foreshadowing’s cool, but dude - restraint is your friend. You don’t have to light Bruce with green light every other scene. We’re already hip to The Big Secret.
• David Banner was a great baddie - very much in the vein of the early Marvel villans without being too comic book-ish. Though when his skin morphed all orange and scaley, I leaned over to Paulie and snarked “funny, he doesn’t look like Ben Grimm” - but it was just a fake out. And, I’d say, a nice -ne.
• I want a sequel, and I want fic, and I want them both very soon. :) I’d like to say I’ve got ideas for some spiffy manips, but I want to tie up at least some of the pieces I’m working on right now before starting anything else new. (My WIP folder is getting a wee bit bloated.)
• The emotive range they got out of the cgi Hulk was just *amazing*. He was a full character, not just a special effect.
• Jennifer Connelly and Sam Elliot are great to watch, and not just because they’re both of the pretty. I never identified with Betty prior to this, but I do now.
• Betty Ross and Lois Lane need to have a sit down bitch session about their emotionally distant, overbearing, military type fathers.
• The back story they gave for *why* the Hulk happened was a great improvement over cannon. (Which, originally, was little more than Bruce was in the wrong place at the wrong time.)
• Speaking of cannon, the bit with Bruce’s mind being “clouded” and non-lucid as Hulk - dead on. They did such a good job with it that I’m itching to see how they would handle a lucid Bruce!hulk, as opposed to angry!Hulk.

After watching the recent movie adaption of “The Time Machine” with Bill, we got to talking. First topic of discussion was the fact that the movie, while very pretty to look at, stank like week old fish. Much style, little substance, and no soul. (But every now and then, one really does just want to watch something pretty with no redeeming value, so that’s ok.)

Actually, that discussion happened *during* the movie. After, I started musing about why any modern adaption of Welles’s work was doomed to failure. Well, any modern movie adaption that Hollywood got it’s grubby mitts on. Why? Because even the most venerably old and honored stores, when adapted to movie form, have to get a whole honkin’ load of modern sensibilities dumped into them. Why? ‘Cause you just can’t make a move these days where there’s no happy ending, or an ignoble hero (unless he’s a suave, sexy, anti-hero), or bias (racial, gender, religous, etc…) of any sort being displayed. (Unless these traits reside in the villian. Then it’s ok.)

The problem being that most literature was written in far less “enlightened” times. Early steampunk, and golden/silver age pulp sci-fi authors were products of their times. Which means the can come across to modern readers as crass, sexist, racist, blah blah bliddy blah.

I don’t have a problem with this. I can deal with the fact that very few of the “classic” authors couldn’t write a decent female caracter to save their asses, over idealized “primitive” (non-western) cultures; or conversly, demonized them. To ask that the work of these (mostly dead) people conform to a current definition of “proper” (or worse, faking that PC-ness not out of a craven desire to avoid giving offense, but out of the crass desire for even more profits) kills the very story they are trying to make a buck off of.

When we write about the future, we are almost never correct. What we are envisioning, is a possible world shaped completely by what we know *right now*. Many of the steampunk stories were rendered obsolete when the atom was split and the old euro-centric political hegemony was replaced by the two nuclear superpowers. The golden age writers, basing much of their work on what was current (scientifically and politically) in the 30’s through the 50’s, were unable to forsee what changes global computer networks would wreak upon sciety, and on and on. Even William Gibson’s Neuromancer says more about the wide eyed “what-if” period of the early internet than it does about the world today. (Which it was, in theory, actually describing.)

So Sci-Fi isn’t about the future at all. And this is never so apparent as when we try to take a story that was the product of a very certain era (late 1800’s) and try to make it acceptable to an early 21st century audience. All the oomph gets drained out, and we’re left with pretty people running around.

If I want a sci-fi story that conforms to modern conventions, you know what I’ll do? I’ll go pick up a modern author. (Nancy Kress, Sharon Shinn, Edward Lerner, and Richard Chedwick all come to mind.) But if I *really* want to time travel, I’ll pick up some Welles, Shelley, Doyle, Asimov, or Clarke.

Been thinking about femslash lately, and my goodness but it can be hard to find some good examples. Didn’t used to be quite so hard, but once Xena was done with… poof! No more. All gone. For every good Buffy/Faith or Hermione/Ginny story I find, there are so many more that just suck. And that’s on the good days when there’s a wealth of fem stories to go through.

I guess I’m a very untypical slasher. (Being less interested in the boys than the girls when it comes to looking for fic) Of course, most (though certanly not all) slashers are female and *straight*. (Te comes to mind as an exception) Maybe that has something to do with it. Certanly, a lot of the mainstream media articles about slashfic seem to focus around the whole “straight women writing about gay men” angle.

So I’m thinking, forget about fic for a while, and lets go find some movies with a femslash undertone. Movies where there’s strong girl/girl UST, ST, or (maybe) kissing, but you still have to read between the lines for the relationship. (Meaning, I’m not counting “But I’m A Cheerleader” or “The Totally True Adventures of Two Girls In Love” for this list, ’cause there’s no subtext there. It’s all quite text.)

1. Fried Green Tomatoes - The movie, not the book. They were pretty much out in the book. The movie got toned down.
2. Tank Girl - Tank/Jet… (with the added bonus of getting to watch Lori Petty.)
3. Bring It On - This one’s slashy enough there’s even a fic archive for it.
4. The Color Purple - Shug was *so* bi. And there was kissage!

Hmm… I was hoping I could think of more than that. ::Goes off to ponder:: More to come later. (maybe)

It’s on TV right now, and I watch the damm thing every chance I get. It’s a guilty pleasure - an out and out disaster movie of the type that mostly went out of style in the 70’s. With most loud, effects driven movies being of the car chase/car crash/terrorist baddies/science run amok types, I kinda like a movie where it’s all bout mamma nature reminding folks that, yes, she *is* the biggest bitch on the block.

Besides, it’s just more comforting watching a movie that has *no* connection the the current screwed up state of the world.

For those folks who might be thinking that Famke Janssen might not be up to playing Phoenix as she goes insane, go re-watch GoldenEye and watch her do psychotic.

Doesn’t hurt that it’s one of my fave Bond films. :)