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Jul. 6th, 2012 11:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwydion* There's been more negotiation between Syria and the UN. I'm not convinced that anything real will be done to stop the genocide, but I'd love to be surprised. It's nice to see Hillary Clinton out working to stop it though. I have a whole lot of problems with the Clintons over a bunch of stuff that happened in the '90's, but I have huge respect for both of them when it comes to political intelligence and foreign policy just generally. I may not trust either of them when it comes to domestic policy, but it's hugely reassuring to me to have someone as tough and able as Mrs. Clinton out negotiating to try to help the Syrian people.
A Sunni general has defected. There is hope that Sunni officers might follow suit.
* I forgot to mention, that in the UK MI5 has busted two terrorist cells and is investigating further.
* Mitt Romney would like to remind all the people in the Midwest and South who have been without power for a week that if he were President he would prevent wasteful stimulus spending on infrastructure upgrades like burying the powerlines to prevent power loss. After all, which is more helpful to the average person, electricity to run the refrigerator in July and job creation, or tax cuts for the super wealthy and corporate welfare? Tax cuts for the rich and corporate welfare obviously, right?
* "Manitoba Trans Human Rights Code Expansion Bill Gets Royal Assent:" http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2012/07/manitoba-trans-human-rights-code.html
* Hector's been escalating since the 4th. It took hours of drama to get him to eat and take a nap today. I do not think the occasional random mortar outside in the driveway is helping.
* Squirrel and I (separately and together) watched a lot of movies that I've been trying to figure out how to write about. Here is the best I managed:
1. Prometheus: It's more movie fragments than a movie. I think this is one of those situations where it requires the rest of the movie (IE: the sequel) to be able to judge if this movie makes sense or not. I can think of ways you could make it make sense, but as it stands there are simply too many holes and questions. Bits of it were interesting enough to chew over later, bits of it were predictable, a lot of it goes into the "pending" hopper.
2. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. We saw this the day it came out, not having read the book or any reviews and with only the trailer as a guide. What I wanted to see was young Abe Lincoln hunting vampires with an axe. No really, that's all I wanted out of the movie and was sadly disappointed. Oh, there was some young Abe Lincoln hunting vampires with an axe, but the problem was they tried to do way too much and rather botched it. Instead of epic scope, they should have taken the first half of the movie and then made a satisfying end to it within the arc. By trying to talk broadly about slavery and the civil War, you end up trivializing the real horrors of both slavery and the war. This is a huge dis service to the memory of all the people who suffered under the very human horror that was and is slavery (slavery still exists in the world and terrible things continue to happen to real live people because of it) and to the meat grinder of a Civil war that chewed up so many lives. That is not okay, and it genuinely made me squirm. This does not even touch the ahistorical nonsense. It's one thing to fill in biographical holes with fantasy in a fantasy story like this, but contradicting well documented fact always makes me itch. Then there are the plot holes and stunts that did not make sense with the way the world works. So basically, this was a terrible, uncomfortable, unwatchable mess, and I spent most of it wishing I were watching the Mythbusters debunk the stunts instead. So problematic and unpleasant and just generally something to avoid.
3. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel: First off, I didn't plan to see this as it looked dodgy and appropriative, but the older men at the Big Gay Potluck really loved it, and the cast is impressive as all fuck, so I decided to see it. I think my Mother would have loved this movie if she were still alive. The acting is as excellent as you'd expect from a group of master actors like Judy Dench, Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy, etc.. The acting is flawless. I can also see why the guys at the potluck really loved it. One was ex-pat in India for something like a decade, and it's a movie about white ex-pats some of whom fall in love with India. Also, I can totally see why the gay subplot would speak to there experience as older gay men of that generation. When one of them said that this felt like his story, I get that, I really do.
The problem is that I'm young enough that I want more from a gay love story than a hug, pretty verbal images, and a death instead of a kiss or a fuck. I'm young enough that I think the gay love story ought to get the same sort of happy ending as the straight love stories in this film. I am tired after a hundred or so years of gay love stories that nearly always end in death. (Yes, there are exceptions, like Maurice, but precious few and most of them very recent). I saw the bird go up and I was like, "Really? This cliche again? This is the best we can do?" When it was confirmed my sentiments can really only be expressed in expletives, which I will leave out. I think the way the film tricked me by having everyone treat homosexuality in a matter of fact no big deal sort of way made the shittiness of the gay subplot feel like more of a betrayal.
Then there's the whole racial narrative of the story. This infuriated me even though it was why I was planning to avoid it in the first place. Again, they started out better than I expected. They had a racist character and have every single person she encountered treat her words, opinions, and behavior with the contempt, disgust, and occasionally fury they deserved. I've worked in jobs were you had to be polite to everyone, even the racist waste of skin ones, and I think that has to go double for medical professionals. The way all but the last one went about showing her how horrible her behavior was was exactly the sort of surface polite so they can't write you up but refusing to put up with the racist crap thing was very believable to be in Doctors and nurses required to serve all omers. The guy who told her off and refused to push her chair further was a relief in that it felt like he was speaking for everyone in his open fury.
To be fair India wasn't all bad. They did capture a sense that India's deep into societal transition and that a whole lot has changed and is changing. I did like Sonny and Sunaina as characters and wished them well. Really, this movie could have been so much worse. I just am tired of stories about white people exploring an exoticized non-Western culture and I am way beyond tired of having a white person save the day for comparatively incompetent brown people. Why can't just once, the brown people save themselves without a white savior? It's boring and cliche and part of a fucked up racial narrative that we really need to get past. I would have been so much happier with an ending where Sonny stood up to his Mother not only about his marital choice, but also in a way that got her to value him the way she did her other sons. I wanted desperately for him to save himself, perhaps by getting Sunaina's brother to invest, or by proving himself competent, or by... I don't know, anything but yet another white savior narrative.
I just... there really was enough to like here that I wish they had had a bigger, better vision, instead of falling back on the same old, same old cliched problematic bullshit.
4. Spider man: I did not see this one, Squirrel did. Everything I'd heard about the film made me want to avoid it. According to Squirrel, it's actually significantly more incompetent than even I expected it to be, with gigantic plot holes and boneheaded continuity issues such as breaking glass in a scene and having the glass magically unbroken later in the same scene. No thanks.
The thing is, I'm bored with Spider Man anyway. Oh, I went to see the Toby McGuire/Sam Raimi ones, and trust me, I am fully aware of all the things wrong with those. I also grew up with the classic Spiderman cartoon. (Spiderman, Spiderman, Does whatever a spider can) I still think it's a little too soon for a reboot, and way too soon for a reboot that has nothing new or interesting to say about Spiderman. I've read box_in_box about the terrible mess Marvel's made of their print reboot and it's clear that is exactly the wrong way to go also. The fundamental problem with Spiderman is he's extremely old fashioned. He feels like the 1950's. He's a classic small town boy next door who falls in love with the girl next store and they go to the big city, but he keeps his small town values. So really, to make Spiderman interesting, you'd have the options of 1. Taking a time capsule Captain America approach, using his sudden thrust forward in time to either deconstruct the boy scout and all the ways the racial, gender, and sexual dynamics were seriously screwed up. 2. Go with the time capsule and use him rather the way they are using Cap. 3. Hell could freeze over and Marvel could make a major super hero gay or bisexual. I know what you're thinking, but it could work. Clean cut small town boy next store goes to the big city and starts exploring the aspects of his sexuality he was supressing back how and grows into a fuller human being even as he explores his super powers. Later, you could have him go home and try to deal with all the ways he's changed so he can't fit into the old box anymore. It'd be better than rechewing the same old plot like a tasteless piece of gum scraped off the underside of a desk.
A Sunni general has defected. There is hope that Sunni officers might follow suit.
* I forgot to mention, that in the UK MI5 has busted two terrorist cells and is investigating further.
* Mitt Romney would like to remind all the people in the Midwest and South who have been without power for a week that if he were President he would prevent wasteful stimulus spending on infrastructure upgrades like burying the powerlines to prevent power loss. After all, which is more helpful to the average person, electricity to run the refrigerator in July and job creation, or tax cuts for the super wealthy and corporate welfare? Tax cuts for the rich and corporate welfare obviously, right?
* "Manitoba Trans Human Rights Code Expansion Bill Gets Royal Assent:" http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2012/07/manitoba-trans-human-rights-code.html
* Hector's been escalating since the 4th. It took hours of drama to get him to eat and take a nap today. I do not think the occasional random mortar outside in the driveway is helping.
* Squirrel and I (separately and together) watched a lot of movies that I've been trying to figure out how to write about. Here is the best I managed:
1. Prometheus: It's more movie fragments than a movie. I think this is one of those situations where it requires the rest of the movie (IE: the sequel) to be able to judge if this movie makes sense or not. I can think of ways you could make it make sense, but as it stands there are simply too many holes and questions. Bits of it were interesting enough to chew over later, bits of it were predictable, a lot of it goes into the "pending" hopper.
2. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. We saw this the day it came out, not having read the book or any reviews and with only the trailer as a guide. What I wanted to see was young Abe Lincoln hunting vampires with an axe. No really, that's all I wanted out of the movie and was sadly disappointed. Oh, there was some young Abe Lincoln hunting vampires with an axe, but the problem was they tried to do way too much and rather botched it. Instead of epic scope, they should have taken the first half of the movie and then made a satisfying end to it within the arc. By trying to talk broadly about slavery and the civil War, you end up trivializing the real horrors of both slavery and the war. This is a huge dis service to the memory of all the people who suffered under the very human horror that was and is slavery (slavery still exists in the world and terrible things continue to happen to real live people because of it) and to the meat grinder of a Civil war that chewed up so many lives. That is not okay, and it genuinely made me squirm. This does not even touch the ahistorical nonsense. It's one thing to fill in biographical holes with fantasy in a fantasy story like this, but contradicting well documented fact always makes me itch. Then there are the plot holes and stunts that did not make sense with the way the world works. So basically, this was a terrible, uncomfortable, unwatchable mess, and I spent most of it wishing I were watching the Mythbusters debunk the stunts instead. So problematic and unpleasant and just generally something to avoid.
3. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel: First off, I didn't plan to see this as it looked dodgy and appropriative, but the older men at the Big Gay Potluck really loved it, and the cast is impressive as all fuck, so I decided to see it. I think my Mother would have loved this movie if she were still alive. The acting is as excellent as you'd expect from a group of master actors like Judy Dench, Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy, etc.. The acting is flawless. I can also see why the guys at the potluck really loved it. One was ex-pat in India for something like a decade, and it's a movie about white ex-pats some of whom fall in love with India. Also, I can totally see why the gay subplot would speak to there experience as older gay men of that generation. When one of them said that this felt like his story, I get that, I really do.
The problem is that I'm young enough that I want more from a gay love story than a hug, pretty verbal images, and a death instead of a kiss or a fuck. I'm young enough that I think the gay love story ought to get the same sort of happy ending as the straight love stories in this film. I am tired after a hundred or so years of gay love stories that nearly always end in death. (Yes, there are exceptions, like Maurice, but precious few and most of them very recent). I saw the bird go up and I was like, "Really? This cliche again? This is the best we can do?" When it was confirmed my sentiments can really only be expressed in expletives, which I will leave out. I think the way the film tricked me by having everyone treat homosexuality in a matter of fact no big deal sort of way made the shittiness of the gay subplot feel like more of a betrayal.
Then there's the whole racial narrative of the story. This infuriated me even though it was why I was planning to avoid it in the first place. Again, they started out better than I expected. They had a racist character and have every single person she encountered treat her words, opinions, and behavior with the contempt, disgust, and occasionally fury they deserved. I've worked in jobs were you had to be polite to everyone, even the racist waste of skin ones, and I think that has to go double for medical professionals. The way all but the last one went about showing her how horrible her behavior was was exactly the sort of surface polite so they can't write you up but refusing to put up with the racist crap thing was very believable to be in Doctors and nurses required to serve all omers. The guy who told her off and refused to push her chair further was a relief in that it felt like he was speaking for everyone in his open fury.
To be fair India wasn't all bad. They did capture a sense that India's deep into societal transition and that a whole lot has changed and is changing. I did like Sonny and Sunaina as characters and wished them well. Really, this movie could have been so much worse. I just am tired of stories about white people exploring an exoticized non-Western culture and I am way beyond tired of having a white person save the day for comparatively incompetent brown people. Why can't just once, the brown people save themselves without a white savior? It's boring and cliche and part of a fucked up racial narrative that we really need to get past. I would have been so much happier with an ending where Sonny stood up to his Mother not only about his marital choice, but also in a way that got her to value him the way she did her other sons. I wanted desperately for him to save himself, perhaps by getting Sunaina's brother to invest, or by proving himself competent, or by... I don't know, anything but yet another white savior narrative.
I just... there really was enough to like here that I wish they had had a bigger, better vision, instead of falling back on the same old, same old cliched problematic bullshit.
4. Spider man: I did not see this one, Squirrel did. Everything I'd heard about the film made me want to avoid it. According to Squirrel, it's actually significantly more incompetent than even I expected it to be, with gigantic plot holes and boneheaded continuity issues such as breaking glass in a scene and having the glass magically unbroken later in the same scene. No thanks.
The thing is, I'm bored with Spider Man anyway. Oh, I went to see the Toby McGuire/Sam Raimi ones, and trust me, I am fully aware of all the things wrong with those. I also grew up with the classic Spiderman cartoon. (Spiderman, Spiderman, Does whatever a spider can) I still think it's a little too soon for a reboot, and way too soon for a reboot that has nothing new or interesting to say about Spiderman. I've read box_in_box about the terrible mess Marvel's made of their print reboot and it's clear that is exactly the wrong way to go also. The fundamental problem with Spiderman is he's extremely old fashioned. He feels like the 1950's. He's a classic small town boy next door who falls in love with the girl next store and they go to the big city, but he keeps his small town values. So really, to make Spiderman interesting, you'd have the options of 1. Taking a time capsule Captain America approach, using his sudden thrust forward in time to either deconstruct the boy scout and all the ways the racial, gender, and sexual dynamics were seriously screwed up. 2. Go with the time capsule and use him rather the way they are using Cap. 3. Hell could freeze over and Marvel could make a major super hero gay or bisexual. I know what you're thinking, but it could work. Clean cut small town boy next store goes to the big city and starts exploring the aspects of his sexuality he was supressing back how and grows into a fuller human being even as he explores his super powers. Later, you could have him go home and try to deal with all the ways he's changed so he can't fit into the old box anymore. It'd be better than rechewing the same old plot like a tasteless piece of gum scraped off the underside of a desk.