Monthly Archives: March 2009

Is that your jaw or did you swallow a landing strip?

Posted on by

Hey look! They’re having an argument…and they’re in a dark alley…and they get mugged! That’s a surprise. It’s almost as if they’ve left Marston’s original script behind, and all of a sudden they can’t think of anything but cliches. Almost.

Wonder Woman beats the crap out of the muggers and Steve simpers “That was kind of hot.” And fetishizing tough women is certainly a thing in contemporary movies. Having it underlined over and over by a frat boy, though, doesn’t really add to the glamor. Why isn’t she kicking the shit out of him, too, when he says stuff like that? I guess the filmmakers just can’t quite believe that masochism is sexier than sexual harrassment….

Fight with Demos is nicely choreographed, though….

“The symbol of tartarus…the greek underworld.” If you actually believed in the religion, you’d just say, “the underworld”.

This “Steve Trevor fighting as an equal stuff…” screw that.

And now he gets to save her from the giant lame bat thing? Did Marston ever let him save her?

50:40 Wow, that’s a grim vision of the underworld; you die and become enslaved to a massively fat decadent Roman despot (I guess he’s supposed to be Greek, actually.)

52:00 Good lord; Steve’s impassioned defense of men makes me want to barf. Sneering at the Amazons for cutting themselves off from man’s world; “Right, because what we need is less communicaton between men and women!” Um, except there are plenty of women on earth, you know, and you tend to interact with them by harassing them systematically , from what we’ve seen.

I bet he hates Bryn Mawr too….

“I’m not going to abandon a friend in need, man or woman.”

And she says, “By the way, you’re starting to sound like a woman.” And it’s a sneer, I think…I’m not sure how else to read it, she’s needling him for revealing his feelings.

Maybe she thought the scene was badly written too, though, to be fair.

54:34 Oh, Christ. Now he’s holding the magic lasso and revealing that he’s a womanizer and a pig because he’s afraid to be hurt. Break out the violins….

Could we please just fuck that shit once and for all? Demeaning women because you feel insecure isn’t cute or sexy or deep. It’s stupid and boring and makes you less, less, less, less appealing, not more. “Oh, deep down, he’s sensitive…it only takes the right woman to bring it out….” Yeah, well…don’t go back to him, Rihanna!

“nobody messes with lincoln!” says Steve. INteresting sentiment for a guy with a southern accent.

I’m just saying is all.

[Update: Really shoudn’t have just said. Not my finest moment. Justly chastised for it here)

Artemis’ giant sword is pretty fun…though, again, it’s hard to argue that she doens’t have some kind of penis envy….

Diana gets saved by her Mom? That’s kind of a let down….

57:42 And the President of the United States is an evil whacko. That seems believable, anyway….

And Wonder woman taunts Ares with not being able to defeat a girl. It’s hard for me to believe an Amazon would ever say that.

Zombie amazons, huh? And the librarian comes back from the dead all butch and tough. It looks like she was really fun to animate; her sort of lurching sword style fighting is maybe my favorite bit of action from the movie; very nicely done.

1:04: “The Amazons are warriors…but we are women too.” So she chose Ares the god of war because she wanted babies and a home? That seems fairly confused. Certainly I see the children bit…but, I mean….Amazons. Surely there are other romantic outlets?

1:07: The threat has been neutralized by “a bunch of armored super-models.”

and then we get her kissing steve. As my ancestores would say, “oy.”

Right at the end we get Steve behaving feminine-like; telling Diana to call if she’s going to be late because he doens’t want dinner to get cold. But it’s definitely played for laughs and seen as unmanning I think…

All right, I’ll have a final post with some last thoughts.

_____________

Update: Update: First thread,second thread, conclusion.

Steve Trevor…why won’t you die?

Posted on by

Jesus, he didn’t even get knocked unconsious.

Hey, it’s the bathing beauties splashing each other scene! Isn’t Steve lucky to have stumbled on that!

That is so fucking annoying. This is the absolute first intimation of lesbianism in the film, as far as I can see — have there even been girls hugging? I don’ t think so…and the butch/femme dynamic at the beginning, with Persephone and the librarian, was played completely asexual; Persephone *could* have tried to protect librarian in a romantic-savior kind of way, but instead she sneered at her as weak; no sexual tension allowed….

until the guy shows up, and we can package our lesbianism for his consumption!

Also, in the original Marston story, Steve gets knocked out, and Diana gets to gaze at *him* while he’s unaware/incapacitated. That story is about female desire; you’re identifying with Diana and what she wants. Not here, though.

Good lord, how many kicks to the groin do there need to be in one movie?

Also, Steve shouldn’t last for half a second in a fight with Diana, much less get in a solid blow.

23:05The amazons are horrified that Steve says “crap”. Again with the anal stuff….

Here’s the contest where they figure out who goes to the outside world. No fighting on top of kangaroo horses, though. When did kangaroo horses stop being cool?

25:54 Jesus, they killed the librarian; for a movie that talks about how much men suck, we are not being very kind to the feminine characters.

Yep the explanation of why she is going to wear red white and blue is almost completely nonsensical.

Good lord; the tit shot of her putting on the bustier. Why? (I mean, I guess I know why, but….)

Took almost half the movie to get her into the red and blue….and almost the first thing that happens after she puts it on is that Steve wolf-whistles at her. That’s pretty irritating….

I know folks have complained that the invisible plane comes out of nowhere. I kind of like that, though. Very silver age.

The bit where she teaches the girl to “disembowel her playmates” is also cute, as Steve points out. (The girls friends won’t let her play pirate because she’s a girl….) The girl-power is a bit preachy…but it is Wonder Woman, after all….

Good lord, Etta Candy as femme sexpot flirt is an absolutely hideous decision. I can see why you wouldn’t want the original Etta (fat, butch, talking only about how much she wants to eat); but making her into a kind of seventies feminist feminine nightmare?

I think it’s pretty much official; the movie does not like femininity. To the extent that Wonder Woman is cool, it’s because she’s traditionally masculine (strong, cold-blooded.) Even her reason for leaving the island is pushed masculine — it’s because she’s bored and cooped up, not, as in the original, because she’s got a thing for Steve.

Steve tries to get her drunk…he’s such a prick

All right.. new post.

__________

Update: Update: First thread, third thread, conclusion.

Does the Invisible Plane Have an Invisible Inflight Movie?

Posted on by

We’re getting set to start the liveblogging of the Wonder Woman animated movie here. This is a new experience for me, so I expect there to be some technical difficulties (read: human error.) We’ll do our best though. If I seem to be taking too long between posts, you can always go skim through my ridiculously overextended analysis of Wonder Woman in comics. Or you can read Chris Mautner’s thoroughly entertaing review of the DVD I’m about to liveblog.

Incidentally, since I’ve read Chris’s review, I’m sort of expecting this to be not that great. And, as I said, I haven’t done liveblogging, so I’m not sure how this is going to work. So if you want dispassionate professional competence, you probably need to go find a newspaper…oh, right. Forgot; they’re all out of business.

_________________________

And here we go….

There’s the title; PG 13 just like I was promised.

Pretty nifty animation, visually; I feel a little like I’ve been dumped into the Lord of the rings though

Ooooh; scary minotaur men

Guess that’s hippolyta…hey they just killed a horse….no wait, it’s getting uphave been in trouble with the animated SPCA

1:42: okay, I think maybe the way to do this is to watch in ten minute bursts and then blog; otherwise I’m going to completely lose the thread, such as it is. So I’ll be back in ten.

2:45 So not quite ten minutes, really. Incidentally, the time is the distance into the film, not the actual time. I’m not in Australia. (or Wherever)

So Hippolyta is pretty tough; the opening sequence where she fights off twelve guys, gets picked up and then dropped by some flying monster thing, catches it with her lasso, decapitates it with her tiara (you’ve gotta love Marston; nobody uses the whole tiara as weapon thing anymore…where was I? oh yeah) while she’s in the air, no less, and then times it so she lands perfectly in front of Ares is pretty bad ass. But then Ares kind of has to ruin it all by suggesting that she used to want to sleep with him. What is that anyway? That’s not cannon…in the first WW story, Hippolyta and Hercules had a thing, which makes a lot more sense since, you know…Ares is the God of War. Don’t fuck with the God of War. As it were.

Also, Ares seems to be suggesting that witnessing bloodshed improves his sexual performance. I guess that makes sense if you’re the god of war….but is it really something you’d want to admit to your ex-flame?

7:14: the psychic energies of war? Good lord, who comes up with this stuff?

I’ve got to say, the Amazons are a pretty bloodthirsty lot too. It’s not so much Hippolyta decapitating her own son (I know, I know…a woman’s choice and all that), but the mean-spirited sneering mockery of the girl who’s not that into the fighting is very much male-coded behavior. We’re pretty far from Marston’s belief in Platonic gender difference, obviously….

10:40: Diana beats Artemis and sneers at her; a snotty Diana is kind of entertaining I guess… It’s not entirely divorced form the source material, anyway; Marston’s WW was kind of a snot too….

So Hippolyta hates all men, and then we’re introduced to Steve Rogers, flying overhead on a completely unexplained mission, involving some random country that apparently is willing to start an international incident by shooting down American pilots.

I like that the first thing we see Steve do is sexually harrass his subordinate (he starts talking about sphincters and then suggests he can help her out with it. Because, hey, anal references and sexual harassment are funny. If you’re a thirteen to thirty year old boy. Which is the audience for Wonder Woman these days, apparently. Who knew?

I couldn’t care less about this fucking fighter pilot crap. I know Steve Trevor isn’t going to get killed no matter how much I want him to, so what’s the fucking point.

I’m going to start a new thread, by the by….

Update: Second thread, third thread, conclusion.

The Cowardly and the Castrated: Color Coda

Posted on by

Bill did a post about coloring in the Watchmen comic and movie, inspiring me to finally get to this post I’ve been sitting on for some time now.

A little while back Tucker Stone and I coblogged our way through the 2nd phonebook volume of Bob Haney Brave and Bold stories. Our mutual favorite of the tales was an amazing Batman/Deadman crossover, which is pretty easily The Best Batman Story I’ve Ever Read.

Anyway, after we’d finished the series, Tucker (who, unlike me, occasionally visits comics stores) purchased and sent me a copy of the original Batman/Deadman team-up which he’d found in one of those storied longboxes. If I’d found it myself, of course, I would have just kept it…but Tucker’s a better person than I am (like Kim Deitch…and probably most other folks for that matter….)

But to get back to the point at hand; I was especially excited to see the original artwork, because I was curious how the color would affect the visuals. The story is a bleak noir, for the most part, so black and white suited it well, I thought. I wasn’t sure whether the color would help or hinder.

I think overall it helps. I’m not sure who the colorist is (could it be Aparo himself? Probably not…though I know he did his own inks) but whoever had the chores does a very nice job. Take the panel below:

Photobucket

The muted blues in the costume and the weird neutral orange/red background actually accentuate the shadow on the face; Batman ends up looking pretty scruffy, which I think is just right.

Similarly, this image is great in black and white:

Photobucket

But I think it’s equally good in color; where, again, the brown really brings out the crazy shadow, actually emphasizing the noir feel rather than detracting from it. (Plus it really drives home the “this is a minority bit” — if you’re going to be racist, I guess it’s best to be as explicit as possible. Or, actually, maybe not, on second thought….)

Photobucket

The panel below is improved too, I think; in black and white it’s not clear where your eye is supposed to go. With the yellow and red added, the contrast is much clearer. I love the way the car is turned more or less red to match the flames, so you have basically a few solid areas of color; yellow, black, red…and even white, as the speech bubbles are nicely incorporated into the aesthetics of the image as well. It emphasizes the stylization of the flames and of the truck…and really of the whole composition. It has a poster art, almost constructivist feel.

Photobucket

Photobucket

Everything doesn’t work equally well. The color on the lips here makes Lilly (the woman in the center) look oddly unnatural.

Photobucket

Photobucket

Though, on the other hand, I think the color helps add to her dyspeptically fierce expression here:

Photobucket

And I love the way the touch of red shading makes Deadman’s path out of the body here more solid; it’s almost like he’s at the end of a twisty ectoplasmic fabric; an effect which is present, but more muted, in the black and white:

Photobucket

Photobucket

So the color was quite successful overall, I think. Things really were better back there in the days before computers….

Can’t Watch the Watchmen

Posted on by

I won’t see the Watchmen movie, though I value the book and don’t mind when the film factory injects a treasured classic with silicon[e]. I even think it’s a plus when I’ve never heard of a single actor in it, save Billy Crudup, who’s replaced early by a computer chip.

Mostly, it’s that I can’t endure the coloring.

In the comic, John Higgins’ colors seemed nasty, lurid, like touching them would infect you with a superbug they’ve only got two antibiotics for and one doesn’t work. My enduring image of it is whole pages of flat magenta or yellow with minor shifts in value. It matched the rotten story and the paper stock. If newsprint seemed to smear color, even absorb it, Baxter(?) paper made it brighter. It’s surely one of the great works of coloring in mainstream comics.

If nothing else, it put me off baked beans for years.

Yet in the movie (trailers), everything’s slick and cool. Its visual sheen has been honed in recent cycle of superhero movies; I guess X-Men was the first, where costumes gave way to hard plastic muscles on bodysuits. Regardless of what they do for the body, they catch the light just so, like a luxury sedan.

Much of the blame should go to the colorist. Even critics who talk about cinematography and lighting, and the rare ones who know the gaffer’s dark art, never talk about coloring (or color grading, as it’s known). The job’s like making a print in a darkroom with expensive hardware.

Stu Maschwitz, a sharp technical mind who until recently ran the VFX house The Orphanage, has a couple of posts on his blog about how color grading can affect a film:

  • Color Makes the Movie, with raw and graded frame grabs from Transporter 2
  • Save Our Skins, about the recent trend in movies to maintain an even flesh color through all kinds of light

So, just from what I’ve seen in trailers & clips, the cold sheen of the images could have been avoided. The recent superhero movies Maschwitz have done, like The Spirit, at least have arresting visuals. Watchmen looks like Turtle Wax.

Nana #15

Posted on by

Just read through the 15th volume of Ai Yazawa’s Nana, and yes, I am still in love with the series. A few more or less random thoughts…some of which I may have said before, but what the hell:

1. One of the things I like most about the series is the way that it manages to be a soap opera and use lots of soap opera cliches — and yet, the way the series uses them is never, or rarely cliched. For example, volume 14 ended with Nana being confronted by a picture of Ren, her finacé hugging another woman (Reira). We know that nothing happened between Ren and Reira, but Nana doens’t..so, totally predictable set-up, right? Nana should go ballistic and be horribly upset and betrayed and there should be all this drama because of miscommunication. Except that isn’t what happens at all; Nana immediately realizes that the picture isn’t all that incriminating and that Ren wouldn’t cheat on her. She is upset, and there is some drama with Ren, but it’s more about the fissures that already exist in their relationship than it is with the photograph per se…and, in any case, their reconciliation occurs fairly quickly.

Basically, the point is that Yazawa seems to trust her characters to be interesting on their own terms. She certainly provides plenty of drama, but she never sacrifices her protagonists to the exigencies of plot. Nana doesn’t become stupid just because the story would be more conventionally exciting if she did. It’s pretty much the opposite of the way that Brian K. Vaughn proceeded in Y; The Last Man, in which the integrity of the characters is gleefully chucked over every available cliff-hanger.

2. I love the way that Yazawa let’s the focus of the story drift from character to character over the course of the story. Nana and Hachi are always more or less the most important characters. But as their lives alter and evolve, the most important supporting characters change a lot. In this volume, I was just noticing how central Takumi (Hachi’s fiance) has become, while Nobu (her former flame) has been pushed off to the sidelines. Meanwhile, Jun, Hachi’s friend, and a central character early on, has a walk-on appearance, and though it’s a very brief scene, you can feel the weight of their past — there’s a close-up where you can see Jun realize that Hachi has become a much stronger and more mature person — and seeing it through Jun’s eyes allows the reader (for whom the transformation has been more gradual) to recognize it too.

Again, the point here is Yazawa’s faith in her work and in her readers. She trusts that even if she drops characters or adds characters, the reader will stay with her. And, perhaps more importantly, she trusts that the story can change gradually and organically, without exclamation points. It’s just incredibly mature and confident story-telling.

3. On another note: this isn’t exactly a criticism, but…today I was talking to a friend who has toured with an act which started small, and then got quite big. And one of the big problems he encountered was with money. That is, when you start out small, nobody thinks much about how you’re going to split the dough, because there is none. But when you suddenly get big, the money becomes a huge issue — one that can sew a lot of bitterness, wreck friendships, and just generally create a lot of drama.

Nana is, of course, about two bands that make it big. And it’s a soap opera, so it thrives on drama. But…there’s virtually never any drama about money. The characters don’t argue about money. There’s no discussion of how they’ll split their takes. There’s an acknowledgment that they are earning money, certainly, but there’s never fighting about it. It’s weird.

A while back I talked about the odd way Nana deals with the band’s drug use and publicity. Most of that strangeness had to do with cultural differences, I think; Japanese bands have to be a lot more careful of their public image, especially around issues like drug use. It seems unlikely that cultural difference explains the problem here, though; I mean, I doubt that Japanese rock stars never quibble over money. Probably Yazawa just doesn’t think that money troubles are romantic or interesting — and possibly she thinks such mundane concerns are beneath her characters, who are all fairly self-consciously presented as artists. I don’t know…anyone out there have any insights? It doesn’t really bother me per se…it just seems odd.