Marvel Sucker - HI69

Comics, Battleship, and INdy 4!!!





jej

New Family Trend

Noelene and I rented 27 Dresses last night. It was this romantic comedy starring Katherine Heigl and Cyclops, and it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. I laughed a couple of times. I'm not posting to talk about the merits of the film though. I was just thinking about this new trend that seems to be arising in popular media, and it was illustrated very well in this movie.

Heigl plays a girl who's been a bridesmaid 27 times, hence the title. She has a huge crush on her boss and does everything for him and for her friends. She's extremely independent and get going, etc. When she's at home she fantasises about her wedding day while reading newspaper clippings of wedding stories. Then she meets Cyclops, who is a writer. He's a creepy jerk. Seriously, he basically stalks her and we're supposed to be okay with this as an audience. Bla, bla, bla, Cyclops teaches her that she needs to let someone take care of her and they end up getting married. Goodbye independent woman. Hello wife.

Heigl also starred in Knocked Up, which is freakin hilarious. In that movie she has a one night stand with a fat guy, who I thought was funny but he wasn't exactly a snag. She gets pregnant and they have a kid together.

Juno, while being all 'edgy' or whatever, is basically an anti abortion film.

I just find it interesting how film trends have changed. I remember romantic comedies in the 90s were all about being independent and finding the perfect guy instead of settling for a jerk. Now it appears that the jerk is okay, the jerk is good because he loves you. Getting married and having kids is THE MOST important thing a woman can do. I'm just surprised that it's changed so dramatically in about a decade.

I haven't seen it, but the trailer says it all, What Happens In Vegas is all about a couple who get hitched and then hate each others guts but have to stay married for 3 months to split some money they've won. I'd be extremely surprised if they don't fall in love and stay married. They hate each other, but they get married. WHAT IS GOING ON!>!?!?

The Juno thing doesn't link so much into this new kind of life strategy movie, but it does show that themes that would have been considered politically right wing not that long ago have made it into so called 'alternative' cinema seamlessly. It's just kind of strange.

There also seems to be a huge focus on family in Australian politics. It's all about 'working families' and day care centres. I'm not saying this is a bad thing. Families are great. Whatever does it for you. I just find it interesting how the media has latched onto this idea, and I wonder if it's going to come full circle again. I also worry that the ideas that feminism had to fight pretty hard to get across are all going to fall in a big heap and be forgotten again.

I guess time will tell.

jej

Moofies - Southland Tales, Day of the Dead

I have only seen a handful of films lately, because of uni, and because of obsessively watching Stargate. We've just started on season 9. The whole thing changes heaps. It's like a whole new show. I still like it I guess.

We saw Indy 4, but I'll rant about that on my next comic vid.



Southland Tales is the new film from Richard Kelly, the guy behind Donnie Darko. I think that because I've watched Donnie Darko I had a lot more patience when it came to this new one than I would have if it was made by some guy I'd never heard of before. The first 15 minutes or so is narration, explaining what's happened to the world in the universe of the film. It's crap. It could have been covered in a few seconds of text, rather than confusing us and putting us to sleep before the thing has even started. I didn't really start to enjoy it until the 3rd act. It's not bad though. It kind of has an 80s sci-fi feel, and there's a few shout out type of things in there. There's a line of dialogue from Mulhullond Drive and I thought maybe it was just a coincidence, but then there's a singer in the final act who also starred in Lynch's film. There is a ton of stuff to look out for in there. It seems to be made for fans who like to deconstruct movies and find all the possibilities. Donnie Darko had that, but it also had this 80s nostaligia thing going, and Drew Barrymore :) and a bunch of really likeable characters. I didn't really like any of the characters in this one. It's just a different type of movie. It's a strange mixed up cast, which just adds to the strange feel of the film. Seeing The Rock get all nervous was great. The end was VERY Donnie Darko, and very 80s sci-fi downer movie. I think I'll enjoy it more on repeated watching. There are also 3 comics available that tell the first 3 chapters of the story. I read the first one, and it kind of felt like an afterthought really, with ties and lines from the movie but not an incredibly strong story on it's own. Oh well.

Today I rented the latest remake of Day of the Dead. The only thing this has in common with the original is that it's about zombies, and the title is the same. Seriously, that's it. It doesn't even take place in the same timeframe or world. No one knows about any zombie outbreak, unlike the original in the trilogy, in which it's a huge, worldwide problem. Basically, I rented an average zombie movie because I thought it was tied to Romero somehow. If it was called Zombietown or some junk I would probably have never seen it. ANYWAY, it was okay. The gore sucked. Cheap CGI blood will never look as good as squirting fake blood everywhere. It just looks dumb. Mena Suvari isn't a terrible actor, but she is in this. Seeing her as a tough soldier is about as believable as seeing Tara Reid as a scientist. Ving Rhames is in it for 5 seconds, and seeing him as a zombie was fun I guess, but the whole thing felt pretty redundant. They didn't bring anything new to this so it was just kind of dull.

That's it :)

jej

Catch up procrastination

Heya,

Just a quick post. I actually have a whole mess of assignment writing to do so I'll keep it brief. Uni is almost over for the semester. It's flown by so quickly! If anyone who visits this blog watches my comic vids there will be more soon. I've just got too much to do because I'm disorganised ;p I'm still posting vlogs though.

The new Indy film is out this week. This is the year of fanboy films. It's crazy. We had 'Iron Man', which I've seen twice now and am in love with, Indy 4, X-files 2, The Incredible Hulk, a new Punisher movie, Speed Racer, Hancock (maybe will be okay) and most importantly, the new Batman! So much drooling and kiddy excitement for us. It's great!

So I have two major essays to write before Friday, but I plan on going to Indy opening night so I best get cracking.

Just wanted to post something so my blog didn't sit there looking exactly the same for yet another week.

Ciao

jej

I want to believe that this won't suck...

So here it is, ladies and germs, the trailer you've all been waiting for....




I'm excited about this film. Great series. Not so great first movie, but maybe the second will be better. I'm not sure how this fits into what happened at the end of the series. It looks like it doesn't at all, but whatever. The one thing that's niggling me is the voice that Scottish accent that you hear about 14 seconds in. Then a little while later my worst fears were confirmed. Billy freakin' Connolly. I don't have a problem with the guy. His stand up stuff is pretty entertaining and he knows how to tell a good story, but for god's sake man, stop acting in movies! His track record sucks! Still Crazy (Bill Nighy rules, but this still blows), The Debt Collector (sooo serious), The Man Who Sued God (riiiiiight), Who Is Cletis Tout? (Steve, if you're reading, that's for you ;p). The guy acts badly in crap films, so it's not a good sign that he's all over this trailer, being all super serious. Ugh!

Now to the cool stuff. Snow is good. Mulder looks like crap and Scully still looks super hot, both awesome reasons to see this. There's a tease of a kiss. The title sucks, but okay, and it's out really, really soon. I'm going to see this. Who's coming with me?

jej

Spectacular Spider-Man

Spidey has had a few animated re-incarnations over the years, but I think I like the most recent one the best. It's a little toony, and it's not 100% comic book accurate, but I think they got the important bits right and the changes made are good ones.

Anyway, here's episode two, with my favourite take so far on 'Electro':



PS There is a poker spam on this video, but once you've closed it the video will load. ;p


jej

Books Books Books

I've got almost a semester worth of reading done, and I haven't really posted anything about it, so I figured a quick look at a few would be fun.

My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin is one of those things you've all heard of but most of us haven't read. She wrote it at a very young age, and it shows, in a positive way. It just has this kind of youthful energy about it. A questioning of God, sex and self; I never realised that there was much early Australian literature that I could draw any enjoyment from, other that to go 'Oh well that's a romantic look at the bush' or whatever. This was really easy for me to hook into. It wasn't quite Virginia Woolf, but it did kind of have a similar vibe about it.

Joan Makes History by Kate Grenville was harder to read, mostly because I just don't enjoy her writing style that much. I've read her later novel The Secret River, and I can see that she writes 'important' stories, versions of the Australian past that are untold, but I just don't connect with her at all. I like what she's about though. Joan is a look at different points of the Australian past with different female Joan characters showing their point of view, interspliced with a story about an immigrant to Australian called Joan. It's all a bit obvious, but I can see that it's important and why we're studying it.

The Man From Mukinupin, a play by Dorothy Hewett, was great, but very much a play and is probably far more effective to see on stage than it was to read. There is a lot of musical numbers and the set and characters are very symbolic. All the actors play two characters, that are essentially two sides of the same stereotype or myth. Hewett was originally from Perth, and that's where the play is set. Even if you're not really into plays, it's worth having a flick through to see the pictures of Noni Hazlehurst and other prominent Australian actors looking much younger than I'd ever seen them before.

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee won the 1999 Booker prize. This was a hard read. Not in it's style or anything. He's a great writer and I flew through this book. What's hard is how ambiguous it all is. The main character is almost completely dispicable and I found it hard to relate to anyone. I think that was kind of part of the point though. It's all about University teacher in Cape Town who has an affair with a student. It kind of goes on from there, but in reading essays and listening to lectures about Coetzee, it's more about his views on post-apartheid Africa. It's a fairly simple story, but it becomes more and more complex in any analysis of it, which is why I really liked it. I could easily read this a few times.

Lastly, I'm about half way through a book that I'm just reading for myself, and not as part of a university unit. A New Reformation - Creation Spirituality and the Transformation of Christianity by Matthew Fox has a few short chapters as it's introduction and then it is mostly made up of the list of 95 These or Articles of Faith that Fox nailed to the door of Castle Church in 2005, in the same way and at the same place that Martin Luther did in 1517. Some of the claims made in the early chapters are in need of a bibliography so that they don't sound completely like unsubstantiated opinion, but I'm pretty much on board with what he's saying. Reading this feels a little bit like he's preaching to the converted, but there are some scary quotes from right wing Christian leaders in the U.S. that scare me. I'm amazed that rantings like these get airtime. Crazy quotes like Jerry Falwell saying "I think Muhammad was a terrorist" on Larry King, and Ann Coulter saying, "We should invade their (Islamic) countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity". Even if these quotes are taken out of context, they are ridiculous. I'm glad Australian television isn't exposed to much this kind of thing. Anyway, it's a pretty interesting book.

That's it.

jej

Posting Catch Up

Regular readers (whoever you are) have probably noticed I haven't posted in a while. Things have been getting pretty hectic as the university semester is coming to an end, and any extra time I've had has been funnelled into making youtube videos (like the two below) and playing video games. After reading so much and writing essays and things I feel the need to stop writing for a while, hence the lack of it on here.



Anyhow, I thought a catch up was in order, just to let you know what I've been upto and that kind of thing. A couple of weeks back we went to see 'The Chaser's Age Of Terror Variety Hour'. I'm a pretty huge fan of their work so it was a no brainer that I would enjoy their live show also. It had a similar format to their television series, segments hosted and put together by different members of the Chaser team, but it was interspersed with a few song and dance numbers and a bit of audience interaction went on, kind of proving their ability to be funny on the spot rather than just with rehearsed material. One thing I realised was that my sense of humour may be more warped than I had previously thought. The Chaser are always pushing the boundaries of taste (as are South Park) but they are yet to do anything that I find shocking or disapprove of. Sometimes shows like Family Guy take it too far just for the sake of a cheap laugh and I don't go along with it, but SP and The Chasers have this self awareness thing going on that I really dig. Anyhow, a few jokes they did in their live show had me crying with laughter, while the majority of the audience was groaning disapprovingly. I figured a paying crowd would be into what they were doing, and mostly they were, but occasionally they found it too much. I didn't. It was just unexpected, that's all.

I've read a few books and seen a few films, but I'll post on those seperately. One thing we've been doing a lot of is watching Stargate: SG1. It took us a while to get through the first 4 seasons. They're great and all, but I'd already watched them once through on my own, and we just weren't in a rush to see them all. In the past 3 or 4 weeks though we've gone through seasons 5 and 6 and are coming to the half way point in 7. I love watching TV series in short periods of time. It's good with a series like SG1 because there are a few pretty dud episodes, but amongst a bunch of awesome ones they are forgivable. If I was watching one at a time and I came across a bad ep I'd be less inclined to keep watching it. Another series that's great to watch all at once is The Sopranos. Each season feels like a long movie. I'm yet to see the final season. Maybe that one will need a re-watch soon. We've X-Files to one side too, and all I seem to watch now is SG1 and the 80s Transformers animated series. WOOT!

I'll stop boring you with telly now and get on to something a little less nerdy. 2 Saturdays ago we went down to the Vic Park Bowl skate comp day thing, put on by Tony. Great day. Good weather and awesome skaters. I took my board down, but I was pretty intimidated by the audience that would be watching me, so we spent the later part of the afternoon at another skate park sp I could roll around a bit.

Last Tuesday was Noelene's birthday, which I'll let her tell you about below:



That's pretty much it. We've got people renting our Safety Bay place now. We haven't been able to sell, but we like the rental that we're in, and at least the other place isn't just sitting there costing us money.

Ciao.

jej