asterroc | Entries tagged with reviews

Just finished marthoning Political Animals. Jesus fuck is that good. Seriously, a drama about politics and a dysfunctional family that I not only enjoyed, but which brought tears to my eyes in the finale?! OMFG. Ungh. And it’s remarkably feminist too, spoilers on why and on other stuff below.

( Feminism and spoilers )

Final verdict: This is a must-watch for everyone. And at 6 episodes around 50 minutes each, it's not prohibitively long. I watched around two episodes earlier this week, and the remaining four today. As I summarized it on Tumblr,

Come for the gay crying strung-out drug addict Sebastian Stan, stay for the powerful feminist women in an unfair world.

Originally posted on Dreamwidth.

comments there. Comment here or there.

Watched Star Trek: Into Darkness in a packed theater last night.

The un-spoilery version:
This movie is a lot of fun action, funny one-liners, and also reveals a lot more about the Kirk and Spock characters, giving them more depth than they had before. I'd recommend seeing it in the theaters. I'm torn about whether I liked this or Oblivion better. Oblivion was prettier and more thinky, this was more action and fun.

( The spoilery version: )

So yeah, I really enjoyed it. :) Go see it.

Originally posted on Dreamwidth.

comments there. Comment here or there.

I want to write a compare-and-contrast essay about the following three serieses:

The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan (I have read through “A Feast for Crows”), Wikipedia
A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin (I have read through “Knife of Dreams”), Wikipedia
The Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind (I have read all but the prequel, and don’t care if that’s spoiled for me), Wikipedia

I shall start said essay here, and who knows if I'll ever finish it. All three are considered epic fantasy serieses, and yet they are VERY different from each other. I have listed them in order of how much I like them, most to least. As mentioned above, I have not yet finished either the Wheel of Time or A Song of Ice and Fire and would appreciate an attempt to reduce spoilers for those I haven’t read (though I won’t get too upset at accidental spoilers since they’ve been out for forever). I cannot promise either this post or the comments will be spoiler-free; if you wish to reduce spoilers in responses to your own comments, I recommend specifying what you’ve read through in your comment. Oh, and please forgive any misspellings of characters’ names or places, I’ve read most of these in audiobook format. Feel free to correct me.

( Cut for length )

So yeah. This isn’t a real essay so I don’t need a real conclusion. :) Go read The Wheel of Time if you haven't already.
Originally posted on Dreamwidth.

comments there. Comment here or there.

For a film that opens with a heavy-handed exposition about how society has moved past all racism and sexism, the makers of the movie sure display a lot of stereotypes and biases. Don't watch this movie if you're looking for a world free of sexism (all the female surrogates wear heels all the time!), racism (there are two characters that are black only to make a statement, and a third dark-skinned individual because the actor happens to be so himself), bias against particular religious groups (there is a group that has aspects of evangelism, and they're not the good guys), age-ism (many characters use younger appearing surrogates), fat-ism (one of the more beautiful surrogate is revealed to have a fat operator, and when the characters meet a fat person they immediately ask him why he's not using a surrogate), or socio-economic/US-centric bias (the intro exposition says that in 19 years from now, 98% of the world is using surrogates, totally ignoring the fact that there are nations other than the US, or that they are poorer than the US). Do watch it if you're looking for an action flick that pretends to be intellectual. I wouldn't say I *liked* the movie, but I didn't regret watching it.

I was recently talking with

calzephyr77 about how so few SF pieces include people with disabilities. The only book/series I could come up with, The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey has the same problem with disability as her other novels have with feminism, in that although she puts the disenfranchised individuals in the limelight, she does nothing to challenge the discriminatory nature of either present day or her fictional society. The only movie I could come up with while thinking then was Avatar, though Daredevil could also do.

I'm currently rereading Heinlein's "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls," my intent being to examine his treatment of women with my current understanding of feminism, rather than how I thought about the issue when younger. I have been pleasantly surprised when ever half hour or so something reminds me that the main character uses a prosthetic leg. It's an unavoidable part of the narrator's life and affects fro the little things like his walking speed to his choice to live in a low gravity environment, but it's not something that permeates every moment of his (or the reader's) thinking.

Can anyone make any other recommendations of SF books with characters with disabilities for me to read? The overall read needs to be good, but I'm curious about both good and bad treatments of disabilities.

This weekend I played through the entirety of Beatles: Rock Band with a few friends in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, Vermont. There's an achievement to complete the entire game in 24 hours, and we did it in two sittings: 1.5 hours on Sunday evening, and another 1.5 hours on Sunday after a hearty breakfast of apple chocolate chip pancakes. Since I'm a vocalist primarily, and the vocals are what's supposed to be new about BRB, that's what I focus on here.

( Full review )

In final conclusion I'm not a Beatles fan and I'm only a casual gamer, but I still think it was worth my $60 due to the harmonies. If you're not a Beatles fan and harmonies don't do it for you, then save your money. If you're a rabid Beatles People, then $60 would be a steal for you. For most gamers, the best balance is to have a friend who's willing to buy it, or consider chipping in together and buying it as a group, or wait a bit and pick it up used. And if your parents or grandparents already have a system (they all have the Wii, right?) then it'd make a great Christmas gift for them.

I used to think when I was younger that Anne McCaffrey was a feminist writer. This might have been partially due to the fact that I viewed my mother as a feminist and she was the one who started me on the Dragonriders of Pern series when I was still in elementary school. It was probably due more to my early notions of what feminism entailed: McCaffrey was a woman, and her books contained a lot of strong women characters who bucked the norm. What I failed to see that the time was that while they bucked aspects of the norm, they did not fight against the gender stratification of their societies, and all of McCaffrey's societies were gender stratified.

And "Freedom's Choice" fits neatly into this trend of hers. "Choice" is the second in the 4-novel Catteni series - I've only read the first two so far, but I'm a glutton for punishment and do intend to read the rest. The main character Kris Bjornsen is a strong woman fighting against the slavery of mankind by an alien race. She takes on a role advising the first leader of the involuntary colonists dropped onto an unknown planet by the enslaving race, and then continues to serve the colony as a scout.

Where the series takes its sharp turn from feminism is when Kris is informed that the leadership has decided (while she was out scouting) to start pregnancy rosters whereby all women in the colony would take turns bearing children. Kris's response is a petulant whine that she doesn't want to have children, or at least to put off childbearing for years (her friend implies this is selfish, and tells her Kris's name was put at the bottom of the list because of her value to the colony), or concern that she will not be a good mother (this problem too has been solved, with creches where unwilling incubators can drop off the babies after birth and never have anything else to do with them, though it's never indicated that anyone actually does this). McCaffrey blows off Kris's concerns as being childish and irresponsible; nobody ever takes them seriously, not even Kris's alien lover (who because of being a different species could never be the father of a child of Kris).

Kris goes along with the program in the end, never outright objecting to the leadership at all. In the end though, the reason she goes along with the program is even worse (IMO) than the program itself. After rebuffing dozens of men trying to get in her pants with the excuse that it's for breeding purposes, Kris is date-raped while drunk. She excuses it to herself as "oh, I was just drunk," and yet she never tells anyone else (not even her lover), when she learns she is pregnant she is embarrassed and then enraged that one of her "friends" reveals it to everyone (and even tries to attack the "friend" and has to be held back), and moreover Kris doesn't even reveal to her rapist that he is the father - if that isn't a clear sign that the sex was NOT a good thing, I don't know what is. And to make it clear that Kris's rape was a good thing and her distaste for it a bad thing, at the end of the book McCaffrey has an omnipotent race appear and reveal to Kris's rapist that the child is his, and he offers to help care for the child when she has to go on another scouting mission. Kris is filled with a benevolent glow and realizes the childishness of her past actions.

Because we all know that a woman doing anything other than meekly submitting to a culture that promotes women as vessels for men's seed is just childish.

How did I *ever* think McCaffrey a feminist? I kinda want to reread the Pern series now, but am afraid to do so (what with the dragons' rape flights and all).

( Cut for spoilers )

I finally got around to reading the 1954 post-apocalyptic novel by Richard Matheson upon which the 2007 film starring Will Smith was loosely based.

If you didn't want to read the spoilers below, my summary is that the novel's good in an entirely different way from the film.

( Spoilers for both the novel and movie herein )

Okay, that came out really lengthy. If you don't want to read the novel eventually, at least give the film's alternate ending a gander.

Today began the once-a-week vegetarian experiment. Well, technically Sunday did, as that's when we did our grocery shopping - I started out by writing down every veggie thing people suggested to me on this post (and if you've got more, please do drop a note here), and since I knew that we had some Quorn [Wikipedia, Quorn.com] at our local Stop'n'Shop that's what I decided to start with.

I'd previously tried their ground beef substitute, which our local grocery store doesn't seem to carry, so this time I went with the "chicken" cutlets. Quorn is "mycoprotein" - fungus, mushroom, that sorta thing, and in the "ground beef" I can tell it's mushroomish. If you're looking for a meat imitation, this isn't the place to go, but if you're looking for a savory meat replacement, Quorn does seem to do the trick. As I've mentioned before, I require that savoriness (umami) in my meals, and Quorn in all forms does seem to have sufficient (though not overflowing) quantity of it.

( Quorn Cutlets Parmesean Recipe )

The texture was a bit startling at first - to me it felt like it was breading all the way through. However, I happen to like the texture of breading so I liked it. The taste was completely inoffensive, and mildly like breading. In the end, I consider it a moderate success: I could eat this every couple weeks just like anything else, but I'll probably get bored of it sooner than most dishes I eat simply due to its inoffensive nature.

The one downside was the cost: it was around $5 for 7oz, where usually we pay around $5 for 1lb of a meat product. The fact that it was in a unit that cost the same as we usually pay for meat, rather than a unit of the same weight that we usually buy of meat, makes it *seem* like less of a price difference than it really is. It was an okay quantity of food; I made extra pasta and included the veggies where normally I wouldn't've in a pasta dish.

For my next veggie attempt, I think I'll make a trip to Trader Joe's and grab one each of anything else on my list of veggie options. (

rumorofrain, do you know if the new co-op carries any of these?) ( Currently I've got listed: )

Any other suggestions?

First off, if you haven't watched the first one (Day Watch) recently, be sure to at least read its Wikipedia page before watching this sequel. Unlike domestic movies, there was no handy-dandy summary at the beginning reminding you of relevant parts of the first movie, and instead it jumps right in expecting you to remember all the characters.

Second, this movie seemed like a low-budget sequel to its predecessor, Night Watch. The special effects of the Gloom were very toned down from the first movie, and there weren't any of the cool subtitles effects from the first.

The plot is good, though a little hard to follow if you've forgotten the first, so it's definitely worth seeing. The Chalk of Fate is a bit cliche, but it works well enough as a plot device in the movie. It's interesting how the penultimate fight of Evil vs. Good boils down to the oh-so-human fight of two Others, supernaturally empowered former-humans, for the love and affection of one flawed man. In the end he makes his choice and redeems himself.

Edit: It's worth noting, that Day Watch ends so that it seems the series is over - except that the answer of how the Great Other choosing one side or the other will win the war for Light or Dark. Perhaps that is to be answered in the upcoming third movie of the series, titled either Dusk Watch or Twilight Watch.

So get this: it's the Wild West and every generation some stupid fuck makes a deal with the devil and in exchange becomes an avenging spirit whose entire body bursts into flame, along with his horse, and leaves these flaming footprints and hoofprints behind, and goes around collecting on the devil's outstanding contracts because he's suck an evil fuck in addition to being a stupid one. Only now it's today, the stupid fuck is Nicholas Cage, it's a motorcycle with flaming treads, and he's a good agent of the devil.

No, I don't get it either. The movie (Wikipedia, IMDB) was okay, just like I'd expected. Cage wasn't quite the pathetic puppydog he usually is in movies, but he wasn't as badass as the character required. I didn't follow the whole contract thing in the plot, but Wikipedia of course made it clear to me. The "pennance stare" is kinda silly. There's this whole thing going on about how doing the work of the devil is really doing good by making evil people suffer and all that, but it's not explored all that well, and even when Johnny Blaze defies the devil at the end, things aren't quite clear - it appears the devil can't break a contract, but the mortal can to some extent?

(And before you chew me out that Mephisto isn't the devil, try telling me where in the movie it says that.)

To sum up: Glad I didn't see it in the theater. Could've done w/o it at home too.

Edit: Oh, and it's got the worst choice of child-version actor ever. I found myself cracking up when it was revealed that he was the main character of the movie as they look NOTHING alike at all. I thought it was going to be Cage's character's father or something. Not at ALL like him.

Wikipedia, IMDB

I hate Johnny Cash. I didn't before the movie, then I found his music to be typical folk/country that I didn't mind except when my father insisted on playing CDs of it over and over again on road trips. Just the one CD. Over and over again. I didn't hate Johnny Cash even then, just some of his music. But now I hate Johnny Cash, the person.

Okay, maybe "hate" is too strong a word, but he definitely is NOT a sympathetic character. Joaquin Phoenix makes a really good villain, but his Cash wasn't a villain either. He was a stupid loser who could only see the bad in his life and "self-medicated" with an addiction to prescription drugs - a path which he was set upon by Elvis and Johnny Lee Lewis (so bizarre it must be true). I like to say that everyone has hardships in life, what marks a person's character is how they react them. Cash throws away his perfect wife and adorable daughters and starts screwing roadies - not because he doesn't love his wife and family, but because he loves another woman (June Carter, played by Reese Witherspoon) and cannot have her. You know why he can't have her? Because she's too good for him and knows it! June's married and unlike Cash she doesn't cheat on her husband. When they divorce she actually feels sorry about it, and remarries rather than letting Cash cheat on his wife. God, he's such an ass!

You know how he finally proposes to her? He *orders* her to marry him, not asks, and does it on fucking *stage* because she told him she didn't want to talk to his sorry addict ass anymore. I was severely disappointed when she said yes.

Two closing and less bitchy thoughts: I wish they'd developed the characters of his backup band more. It's the same individuals throughout the movie, but the most we ever learn about them is they like to play gospels, and they buy him a plane ticket home when he hits rock bottom and then leave him there. Second: Man, they can sing! I really like it when actors sing their own parts. Phoenix does a remarkable job of Cash's voice too.

Current Music: Walk the Line - Live

I've been promising this one for a while. I finally got around to buying Etymotic earplugs. Why? Well I find that I can only get foam earplugs into my ears the right way one time in 5, and the silicon ones that go over my ears aren't all that comfortable either. I wear earplugs for concerts (bands/clubs, not classical music), airplanes, and if there's noise preventing me from sleeping. I was looking for something more comfortable, easy to use, reasonably priced, and good sound quality.

Etymotic earplugs fit most of these reasonably well. I chose the "Baby Blues" which are their smaller size - I have trouble physically fitting foam earplugs into my ear canal, and silicon earplugs I always pull off 1/3 of the material prior to use or else there's a huge lump sticking out from my ear. I made the right choice in size, I'm glad to say. I got the set with a lace to connect the two earplugs - don't pull the lace to take them out, or you'll yank the lace off and have a heck of a time putting it back on. Yeah, I did that. They cost some $13 + $6 shipping so $19 total, a reasonable price.

Sound quality is excellent - cheap earplugs cut off more high frequency sound than low, so that you can't hear yourself talking and have no chance whatsoever of carrying out a conversation. Sounds just seem muffled and distorted with cheap earplugs. These earplugs cut off all frequencies evenly, and do reduce the noise more than cheap earplugs. Instead of things sounding muffled, they simply sound *quieter*. I expect they will be excellent for concerts. Unfortunately, because of this they are not as good for snoring as I'd hoped, but they're not any worse than cheap earplugs.

They're much easier to "install" than foam earplugs - moisten them a bit, and slow shove into your ear canal until it gets uncomfortable. You can't really do it wrong, every attempt works. To remove, grab the part sticking out and gently wiggle it out. They are definitely more comfortable than foam earplugs, and slightly more comfortable than silicon ones - I still get some of the ear wax feeling that silicon ones give me but less of it, and some of the ear-popping but less, and also a little bit of the pressure/discomfort of it on the inside of the ear canal but not much. The problem comes in trying to sleep - unless you sleep exclusively on your back, these are NOT really a good choice for sleeping. The little plastic handle that sticks out will hit the pillow and push in on it, increasing the discomfort. You can get around this if you shove your pillow up towards the top of your head and only lean the top of your head on the pillow, but it's not really all that comfortable either.

Conclusion: these'll be great for concerts, probably very good for airlines, but I think I'll stick with silicon for sleeping.

(Can you tell I'm on Spring Break?)

Déjà Vu (Wikipedia, IMDB) starring Denzel Washington with Val Kilmer as a major supporting character is what I would call a stealth Sci-Fi movie. Based upon what I recalled of the trailers and such, I was expecting the movie to be a Denzel Washington action drama, with touches of thriller and some sort of supernatural/ghosts/New-Agey crap. And then they slammed us with Kilmer explaining about Einstein-Rosen bridges and wormholes while Washington throws chairs at monitors and yells something to the effect of "stop talking science and tell me the truth!" Had me in a giggling fit and rewinding to hear it another two times as I totally don't picture Kilmer as a scientist-type, and Washington strikes me as more intelligent and likely to understand time travel.

They did a decent job of explaining the physics of wormholes, and also the sci-fi aspects of time travel, causality, and alternate universes. I like how they resolved his death in the end, and explained a bunch of the small inexplicable things (though I was expecting they would all be explained via messages, not bodily travel). The chase scene is entirely gratuitous, and I admit I zoned out a bit during it, but it doesn't detract overall.

If you're a fan of Sci-Fi, action, and/or Denzel Washington, this one's a must-see. I'm a fan of all of the above, so I definitely enjoyed it.

I read the Philip K Dick novel of A Scanner Darkly a while ago (Wikipedia), a little before the movie (Wikipedia, IMDB) first came out. I remember finding the novel difficult to follow due to the split nature of Fred/Arctor's personality, but with time it becomes clear that they are evolving into separate personalities. In the movie it is more difficult to follow, primarily due to time constraints, the separate identities do not become as fully developed, but it does make some sense. The roles of the other characters is more fuzzy, other than Donna at least, as that one is blindingly clear at the end. I forget if in the novel we ever find the original idenity of Fred/Arctor, since it turns out his story of his wife and girls is a hallucination as well.

Keanu did his normal high quality of body acting - and I'm serious about that still. Keanu is not a good actor when you think of his speech or his words, but if you look at how his body moves and behaves, he's amazing. The style of the movie, the animation, worked well, giving it a surreal feeling. I didn't realize it was all drawn over the original, I thought there was an automated process. Wow. I was impressed with the appearance of the exterior of Arctor's house - it's *exactly* what was in my head before I saw anything about the movie.

I would recommend reading the book first and then seeing the movie so you can better follow what's going on. I am not clear how close to the truth it was, so I'm going to go back and read both Wikipedia articles and see how they compare. But it's good overall.

Footloose (Wikipedia, IMDB), despite what it claims, is not a movie about dancing and rock'n'roll. It is a movie about country values vs. city values, and misguided religious intolerance. Don't get me wrong, there's lots of dancin' and half of the Billboard Top 10 hits from the 80's were written for this movie, however those things are a metaphor. The dancing and music serve as scapegoats for the town leaders, including the preacher, just as do the references to banning and burning books.

Plot is mostly cliche and insipid, and even the music failed to energize me this time, though I think that's more me today than the music itself. I do like 80's music, and I like knowing where it came from. Despite the music being actually written for the movie, it often felt out of place to me where it actually came in - that's the drawback to knowing the soundtrack of a movie before seeing it. For example, "I Need a Hero" is the music during a game of Chicken with tractors! WTH?!

Wikipedia doesn't say whether Kevin Bacon did most of his own dance scenes - there's an impressive one in a warehouse where he's railing against the restrictive culture of the small town, and simultaneously is torn about a girl he likes. I'd like to know if he did the whole thing (other than the stunts) or not.

My favorite part of the movie (of course, see icon) is when Kevin Bacon at a town meeting moves to strike a law from the books, and speaks to his motion by quoting from the Bible about dancing. Classic! :-P

Popping around after a link from

sclerotic_rings led me to this sci-fi short story. It starts off kinda slow, narrating the tale through letters between a biologist husband in Colombia and his wife back in the US, but the pace picks up rapidly by the end. I won't spoil it too much for you, but the premise is that a cult breaks out around the world of men who feel it is their duty to kill all the women in the world, and the search for what is really going on.

This one is by the same author (Alice B. Sheldon / Raccoona Sheldon / James Tiptree Jr. used pseudonyms liberally, and she's quite a character in her own right) and I will read it next.

Nearly 2 years and more than 132 hours later, I've beaten Final Fantasy XII. I did *not* complete all the side quests; I got quite far in them, but I was getting bored of doing them so decided to advance the plot and next thing I knew, I was done. Well, not really - what I thought was going to be the last quest turned out to not be, it was the second-to-last, strangely. I think I'd lost track a little of the plot, or I might've known. It was refreshing that the male and female leads did not fall in love and marry and live happily ever after.

I'd say the story is a little less intriguing than my favorite, FF8, and I miss the Junctioning and GF system, but I like the Gambits a lot, takes away a lot of the micromanaging that I am not a fan of. The License system is intriguing, but it becomes moot after you've done a bunch of leveling towards the end of the game. I'm glad I didn't have to dick around with any stupid card games; the Hunts are a nice set of sidequests that net you good items and experience. There were a few Magics I never found in the whole game, and should I play it through again I will attempt to find them. Or I might just pick up from the last save I had and get the remaining Hunts and look for those Magics - the structure of the Hunts makes it so that (as far as I can tell) none of them ever become unavailable, so I don't think I "missed" any Hunts. I kept expecting some sort of mini-game of flying the Strahl, but there wasn't one. I found in the end that the best combination of character roles was a tank who also did stealing, a defensive spellcaster, and an offensive spellcaster who also did some other technics in boss battles. Losing the encounter system and being able to change weapons mid-fight was great.

If you have a short attention span, do NOT play this game. If you like RPGs where you get soooooooo many hours of gameplay for your buck, then do.

The latest -and perhaps last- in the string of 1980's musical movies that I've been watching this year was Fame [Wikipedia, IMDB] (movie #7, others being Grease #5, Flashdance #3, and Dirty Dancing #4). The movie was not as musical as I was expecting, though there were a few gratuitous bursts into song and dance, and some gratuitous acting as well. It's essentially Hogwarts for performing arts¹ in that there are many students with their many stories, and none are gone into as depth as they should be. The entire tale is little vignettes into the life of an overachiever in the performing arts, including the dramas of self-revelation, failure, family strife, and budding sexuality. If there are geeks in your life, especially ones who went to nerd camps or schools, it's a must-see, but for all others you can take it or leave it as you choose.

Are there any other 80's musical movies that I've missed?

¹Yeah yeah, I know Rowling would've ripped Parker and not the other way around.

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Entries tagged with reviews

Political Animals

Star Trek: Into Darkness

Compare and contrast

"Surrogates" review

Disability in Sci Fi

Beatles: Rock Band review

Book review: "Freedom's Choice" has no freedom or choice for women

"Watchmen" review

Book Review: "I Am Legend"

Veggie Review: Quorn Chicken Cutlets

Movie #17: Day Watch

Movie #16: Ghost Rider

Movie #15: Walk the Line

Review: Etymotic Earplugs

Movie #13: Déjà Vu

Movie #12: A Scanner Darkly

Movie #11: Footloose

Reading

Game Review: FFXII

Movie Review: Fame

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