Bite-Sized Blog: Iron Man the Third

What could have been...

Saw it a few days ago, before I went to the States. I’m not going to write a full review, but I do feel sufficiently moved to comment on one thing that really got my brain whirring – the villain.

As it is, Iron Man Three is another fun superhero film with top-notch effects, some sparkling dialogue, a few very inventive set pieces, one or two moments of attempted profundity, and plenty of nods and winks to fans of the comics. In my opinion, it’s better than the second film, though not as successful as the first: it’s largely middle-of-the-road as Marvel Cinematic Universe films go.

But the villain! What an incredible, brilliant, paradigm-shifting antagonist the Mandarin was... or could have been, if the film had any guts.

MARK III ARMOUR

HEAVY SPOILER ENVIRONMENTS

The Fourth Scottish Invasion

Hope Blogger doesn't eat this one...

It's been a while since I've posted anything Howard-related. To be frank, I think I'm a bit burned out on REH, not just on the Encyclopaedia, but on REHupa, and keeping up to date on news and events. Combined with working on my burgeoning comic artist career, things might be light on the Howardian front for a while. I'm particularly frustrated that I haven't continued the "80 Years of Conan" despite being a year since I started it.

That said, I'm still going to Howard Days in June, where I'll be speaking on Robert E. Howard in comics. Unlike fellow Cimmerian blog alumnus Jeff Shanks, I'm not a collector and not much of an authority on the Marvel comics; unlike Mark Finn, I haven't been asked to write forewords and afterwords to Dark Horse collections. But I'll give it a shot all the same!

I also plan on attending the Phoenix comic convention. No William Shatner this year, sadly, but there are lots of others whose ears I plan on chewing off.  I'd be ecstatic to meet Bruce Boxleitner as a Babylon 5 aficionado, but if I get the chance, I'd like to see if I could pick his brain about Robert E. Howard, since he's a hardcore REH fan himself.  On the Star Trek side, Walter Koenig, Wil Wheaton and Nichelle Nichols will be in attendance: my young cousin would practically demand I get a picture from Wil, and I very much want to meet Ms Nichols. Uhura was one of my favourite Trek characters, and she just seems like such a lovely person.

Then there are others vaguely linked to Conan and REH like Brandon Sanderson, Dan Jurgens, Geof Darrow (heh), Jay Fotos, Nat Jones, Joshua Dysart, Michael A. Stackpole (who I still owe a signing!), Mike Mignola (who I'm just as anxious to meet for his work on Hellboy), Mike Norton, and a few others like the Pinis. Peter David wrote some rather fun Star Trek novels I enjoyed: I'd love to know if he based Mackenzie Calhoun on Conan/Kull, or if it was just a fun coincidence. Rice & Haggis has a Scotsman at their panel, who I'd like to show countryman support. Katelyn McCaigue's work interests me greatly. And I vividly remember Jolene Houser and Val Hochberg from a lovely panel they did last year on female comic writers, so it'd be nice seeing them again.

Another interesting semi-Howard connection is Christy Marx, most famous for Jem and the Holograms (a fixture of my early childhood, even without considering I had a babbie sister at the time) but also the story editor and writer for the much-maligned Conan the Adventurer. Much as I had severe issues with the cartoon, it's easy to see that a lot of the problems are borne from the very nature of making a Saturday morning cartoon show out of Conan to begin with: all things considered, I'm actually impressed with the number of Howardian elements that did make it into the show. Certainly more than the more mature-themed Marvel comics at the time bothered with, I'll tell you that much.

There are a few events and panels I might go to: Writing Believable Fantasy, Worldbuilding in Science Fiction and Fantasy and The Epic Fantasy Panel (even if Terry Brooks is there, boom boom!),  The Short Fiction Panel, Illustrating Your Own Work, The World of Sketch Cards, Webcomics 101, Historical Settings, Nichelle Nichols' panel, Star Trek and the Human Potential, Historical Fiction and Dystopian Fiction: Similarities and Differences, and An Animated Career. Some of these might overlap, so I'll check closer to the event.

Most hilariously, John Barrowman will be attending - hilarious, because I live only a hop, skip and a jump away from his childhood home Millport, and in fact the Weird Sisters often spend weekends over there with friends.  Their natural charm almost got Erin Gray hijacking them for the weekend last year: who knows what would happen if they came across Barrowman?

So I'll be in Arizona shortly, where I'll spend two weeks or so getting over the flight, exploring more of the arid alien landscape, catch up with old friends, and maybe a bit of blogging in between preparing for CP. Then on to the 36 West, where I'll hope to see more old friends and make new ones.

See you there, folks!

Scotland Into Darkness, and other thoughts on Star Wars

“(Star Trek) always felt like a silly, campy thing. I remember appreciating it, but feeling like I didn’t get it. I felt it didn’t give me a way in. There was a captain, there was this first officer, they were talking a lot about adventures and not having them as much as I would’ve liked. Maybe I wasn’t smart enough”

“"I had no idea there had been 10 movies! I still haven't seen them all. I didn't want to become a student of Star Trek. I felt that was actually one of the few advantages I had. I was trying to make a movie, not trying to make a Trek movie." ”  

 - J.J. Abrams - just as well he isn't making any Star Trek films, right?

I had some other thoughts on it.  I could do the Energiser Bunny on this with my criticisms, but I'll just keep it to this post. If I think of anything else, I'll just add it here, and not clutter up the rest of the blog.

Star Wars Into Darkness

No Darth Vader, though.

So I've given you my thoughts on the previous Star Wars film, and since I've now seen Star Wars Into Darkness, I think it'd be fun if I did a review of it.

... This was a Star Wars movie, right?

Ray Harryhausen - Requiescat in Pace

I had to learn to do everything because I couldn't find another kindred soul. Now you see eighty people listed doing the same things I was doing by myself.
 - Ray Harryhausen

EDIT: The following is something I wrote for my BA degree in 2006. The subject was to discuss a pioneering filmmaker's impact on modern media: I chose Ray Harryhausen. I figure it only fitting to pay tribute to the man who had such a profound impact on my imagination to share some of the findings I have on a blog that might not exist without his inspiration.

I Spent an Entire Evening Writing a Post.

It was full of links, citations, quotes, you name it. I was very proud.

I mistyped. Oh dear, I'll have to undo that: CTRL-Z, my friend!

CTRL-Z. Whole page goes blank.

Shock.

Panic.

CTRL-Y. Nothing. CTRL-Z. Nothing.

Backspace in desperation.

Auto-Save.

It goes to previous page, even as I knew the cursor was in the typing field.

I scour the internet for solutions.

You cannot turn off Auto-Save. You cannot retrieve unpublished posts. You cannot restore previous drafts.

It is gone.

It has drifted on the aether of night's Plutonian shores.

Despair.

Panic.

Rage.

Impotent rage.

That Star Trek Film Wot Came Out A While Back

 C'est la vie.

"How do we know that your 'correct history' is the right one? The best one?"
"Because, Jim, here in your timeline, billions of people are dead."
 - Star Trek: Phase II, "In Harm's Way" (which you can watch here and here)

Hey, it's May the Fourth! Let's talk about that beloved science fiction franchise which has inspired and delighted a generation since its debut all those decades ago - that's right, Star Trek!

I'm a Trekkie.*  I'm also a fan of Star Trek: Phase II, which is easily the best Trek we've had this entire millennium.  So when I learned that the astoundingly high-quality fan series would continue their tradition of adapting lost Star Trek scripts with Norman Spinrad's "He Walked Among Us," I was over the moon.

But then, CBS put the kibosh on this...

... after news of Spinrad’s discovery spread rapidly around the Internet, CBS set its phasers to “meddling threats of litigation,” sending a cease-and-desist letter to Spinrad that demanded he remove the script from the web and immediately scrap all plans to adapt it, given that it still legally belongs to the studio.

Spinrad complied and has said little on the matter since, other than posting a clearly lawyer-prepared statement noting that he is not allowed to comment further and that CBS is now “considering opportunities to offer licensed copies of the work”—but not, however, considering allowing Phase II to go ahead with producing it, even if it’s had little problem with the group’s not-for-profit homages before. As the New York Times notes, Phase II has even been allowed to adapt another shelved Star Trek screenplay in the past (David Gerrold’s “Blood And Fire”), leaving Spinrad to drop some pretty strong hints that much of CBS’s recent change of heart has to do with pressure from J.J. Abrams to not allow the production of any Star Trek material that could possibly interfere with his own.

It's unclear just why CBS would stamp this out when they've turned the controversial "Blood & Fire" (aka The Gay Episode) into a fully-fledged episode that's better than 75% of official Star Trek episodes considering they also technically claimed copyright, but it seems Abrams may have a part in it:

For what it’s worth, Spinrad only makes this connection indirectly—responding to a fan’s assertion that “maybe J.J. isn’t to blame after all” with “I didn’t say that,” then continuing, “But I am not legally bound not to say that I found J.J. Abrams' first Star Trek film quite inferior to the Phase II videos and his cavalier attitude towards the decades-long legacy of what Star Trek has come to mean to the general culture quite reprehensible, and indeed artistically counterproductive.” So, that definitely seems sort of telling.

Now, I'm aware that lots of people liked 2009's Star Trek.  Other people loved it.  I - horror of horrors! - liked it too.  It was a well-designed, fun action adventure with some phenomenal acting from Karl Urban (who I'm convinced performed a seance prior to filming to summon the spirit of DeForest Kelly, or at least just watched everything the man's ever been in up to and including Night of the Lepus). I had a great time at the cinema oohing and aahing at the explosions and pretty starships. I enjoyed all the little in-jokes and nods that were put in for guys like me. And whatever happened, it worked. It obviously gave Star Trek the shot in the arm Viacom wanted after the massive over saturation of the late '90s/early 2000s, and you could argue the association would have drawn a new generation of fans to the original series. I certainly wonder if we'd be enjoying the super-duper remastered Star Trek: The Next Generation blu-rays without the proof that the Star Trek brand was profitable, because brand equity's all some executives tend to care about.

On the other hand, I had serious problems with the film : most of the complaints were made by others, and I really wasn't in the mood to engage with Strawmen on the issue ("You didn't like it because it wasn't full of pseudo-scientific drivel!" "You didn't like it because it had young actors instead of old fogeys!" "You didn't like it because it's hip and mainstream instead of weird and underground!")  And the Children of the Straw were out in force.  You got sites like The Onion making what seems to pass for biting, insightful satire by making the (entirely jocular and not at all serious) claim that classic Trekkies don't like the film because it's "fun," "action-packed" or all those other things that apparently preclude it from being Trek.  Now, I'm not criticising The Onion for their parody - that's what The Onion is for - but I do criticise those who feel that it's a reflection of the truth. Even reviewers I admire were far more forgiving than I was willing to be, especially the legendarily scathing Red Letter Media and SFDebris. It can be frustrating, since it seems many people cannot understand that you can like a thing and still acknowledge its shortcomings.

So if you liked 2009's Star Trek, then by gumbo that's just dandy, I'm glad you did - so did I. However, I hope you'll note that I'm not legally bound not to punch the air at Mr Spinrad's remarks all the same.

Bite-Sized Blog: Weird Science Could Have Been Great

Yes, the '80s remake madness continues as John Hughes's strangest film (apparently loosely adapted from Al Feldstein's "Made of the Future," published in Weird Science #5) is due for a modern update:

EXCLUSIVE: Universal Pictures and Silver Pictures will remake Weird Science, the 1985 ultimate nerd wish fulfillment comedy that was written and directed by John Hughes. The film will be produced by Joel Silver, who made the original with Hughes at Universal. Michael Bacall will write the script. He scripted the sleeper hit Project X for Silver Pictures and wrote the script for 21 Jump Street, another 80s-centric property that became a hit for Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill.

Now, the knee-jerk reaction would be concern about messing with any film by Hughes, who made this comedy right when he was in that wheelhouse of transitioning from screenwriter of Mr. Mom and National Lampoon’s Vacation to director of teen-angst comedies like Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club (which preceded Weird Science) and Pretty In Pink and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (which followed Weird Science).

This film will attempt to carve out its own identity by being redrawn as an edgier comedy in line with 21 Jump Street and The Hangover, which were R-rated; the studio says the rating for Weird Science is not certain at this nascent stage. The original starred Anthony Michael Hall and Ilan Mitchell-Smith as brainy nerds who attempt to create the perfect woman to fulfill their heavy-breathing adolescent fantasies, only to find she is something more than a sex object. The original also starred Bill Paxton and Robert Downey Jr, with Kelly LeBrock playing the bombshell creation. It was later turned into a TV series for USA Network

Silver Pictures’ Silver and Andrew Rona will produce, while Alex Heineman will be exec producer. Uni’s Scott Bernstein will oversee the pic. Bacall is repped by CAA and Jeff Shumway.

What a missed opportunity this is. I mean, sure, it could be an alright film. And I could wake up tomorrow with wings on my ankles.

The Further Perils of Patriotism

I'm lifting my moratorium on talking politics on the blog for what I hope will be the only time, just so people can be clear about it, and why it's simultaneously very important to me, yet something I don't want to use to burden this blog.

Bite-Sized Blog: Oz, The Great and Patriarchal

Oz: The Great And Powerful was intriguing in the way Raimi's own Drag Me To Hell was - more interesting as a study or commentary than as a narrative. In Oz's case, I got the distinct impression the movie was a study in the magic/trickery of cinema, the audience's participation in suspending disbelief, and the invitation of parallels to reality even in fantasy worlds. Not sure if it's intentional on Raimi's part or not, but I was pleasantly surprised.


WE'RE OFF TO SEE THE SPOILERS

Obviously this isn't Baum's Oz, it's another riff on the MGM film. Despite Raimi's transparently false protestations that this was more tied into the books, it might as well have had Evanora wearing ruby slippers. I think this was more to get MGM off Disney's back than trying to appease the Baum fandom, but in any case, it isn't the only thing seemingly stuck in the 1930s.




There's a lot of criticism of the film's apparent chauvinism and anti-feminist idealogy: the three most powerful women's conflict centres around a man, and how it was prophesied he would save and liberate Oz, with two of them even falling for the cad. Indeed, Oz is partly responsible for several very important aspects of later Oz mythology. Frankly I think the salient fact that Oz was a *fraud* who didn't actually have any power, combined with the most functionally powerful figures being women, could still be read as pretty feminist. Kind of. If you squint.

Consider: the conflict in the film is between Glinda and Evanora, with Theodora being neutral. Glinda & Evanora have a stalemate, with a slight advantage to Evanora given her machinations and politicking.  When Oz comes into the picture, he makes things instantly worse for Glinda by inadvertently causing Theodora to align with Evanora, making it two Wicked Witches against one Good Witch. Therefore, it could be argued that this isn't so much a case of  Oz saving the day, but rather evening the odds. Glinda, after all, could only do so much with a population forbidden from killing, and two witches equally as powerful as herself.

Perhaps, then, the film is simultaneously upholding and demolishing that old chestnut of patriarchy, that while women are all well and good, what civilization really needs is a man! Even if he's completely ineffectual as a ruler, wizard and general human being, the fact that he's The Wizard, not The Witch, seems to be some magical clause which causes the people of Oz to adulate and near-worship him in a way they didn't for any of the witches. Look at just about any political system in the world, and you'll see this ridiculous notion in practise: it's no coincidence that there was a black male president of the United States before there was a white female president. Were the Witches buying into the patriarchy themselves, or were they actively exploiting it to achieve their goals? If the latter, why would they bother, considering their powers are quite clear, and could provide a precedent for a more egalitarian society? Come to think of it, is Oz as ensnared by patriarchy as our world? It certainly had no apparent problems with race, with many black individuals among the Munchkins and Quadlings.

THE WONDERFUL SPOILERS OF OZ

Maybe this is one of those films where you can read both a feminist and misogynist image into it: going out of it, though, I felt that it was clear Oz' "power" was just as phony as it was in the original, and that the Witches are the true power of Oz.