Horror Movie Horrors: The Perfect Host (2010)

Some movies you turn on really anticipating a positive experience. I went into The Perfect Host completely blind - having seen no trailers or hype for it and read no reviews. I turned on this Netflix listing simply because I like David Hyde Pierce.

Pierce: The Face of Horror.

And seriously, a horror film with David Hyde Pierce? The man I would cast to play Food Network's Alton Brown? I've always had an inkling that his acting ability far outweighed the parts I had seen him play, but I was understandably skeptical about seeing him in a horror movie role.

To be fair, The Perfect Host is much more of a thriller than a horror movie - and it is one of the best thrillers I've seen in recent years. It's subtle when it needs to be and does a wonderful job of slowly peeling back the layers of the story, providing a great number of twists and turns without giving you much in the way of exposition.

It's hard to summarize the plot without giving anything away. A fugitive, having just completed an armed robbery, is on the run when his identity is splashed all over the local media. Injured and needing a place to hide, he cons his way into a man's home (played by Pierce) as he prepares for a dinner party. Not all is as it seems, though, and he quickly finds himself regretting his choice of hide outs.

There is so much more going on in this plot. Wanting to avoid spoilers, I can't really elaborate further, but this film does a lot of "turning the tables" on it's characters. Unlike a lot of Hollywood twists, these aren't unbelievable events that come out of nowhere and really don't mesh with the plot. Instead, newcomer writer-director Nick Tomnay does a brilliant job in the planning and execution of this plot. You can tell that he carefully deconstructed his overall story and sprinkled those plot points like bread crumbs for the audience to pick up on. There is very little flat-out exposition. Instead, the audience is given all of the pieces they need to understand what is going on without anyone having to spell it out for them.

I definitely recommend this film. It's strange and mysterious as you learn more about Pierce's character, whom he plays perfectly. They leave a lot of questions unanswered in the end, but in a good way.

Horror Movie Horrors: The Inheritance

I stumbled across this movie when it was added to Netflix a little while ago. Seeing a few names I recognized (and the fact that I would enjoy just listening to Keith David read the phone book to me), I added it to the queue for a rainy day. Well, it's not quite rainy, but I do have a rare day off with nothing in particular to do, so I decided to check it out.

When the final credits rolled, I decided to check out some of the reviews for the movie (something I can't do when on my Xbox, which is how I access Netflix 90% of the time) and was kind of surprised. With every horror movie, you expect to see a lot of low ratings. Part of this is because horror movies tend to be crappy, but it can also be attributed to the fact that people can be incredibly picky about what they're looking for in a horror film. Some are looking for extreme gore and they don't care much about the plot, others look for compelling writing and performances, while still others are just looking to have the pants scared off of them. With a fairly broad scope of points to hit, it only makes sense that horror movies tend to get lower ratings.

Also, horror films tend to be shit.

But I was seeing review after review saying that this was the worst movie ever.

A short list of some horror movies that are worse than or equal to The Inheritance, limited by what I have personally viewed: 

Redneck Zombies
American Psycho 2: The All American Girl
Manos and the Hands of Fate
Gamebox 1.0 (which I've been meaning to write a review for)
Ticked Off Trannies with Knives (still trying to figure out how that got a high rating)
RoboGeisha (it's more of an action flick, but it has enough gore to be labelled horror)
Cabin Fever
Deadgirl
Transylmania
Satan's Little Helper
The Sitter
After.Life
Tooth and Nail
Any number of films featured on MST3K 

And that's not counting the number of films I've seen detailed reviews for that look 10 times worse. You want to call The Inheritance the worst movie of all time? Go watch some of the films reviewed by The Cinema Snob and then we can talk.

Now, I won't make any claims that I was watching this film with a serious critical eye. Today's movie choice was a film turned on as background noise while I spent some quality time beading.

Diet Coke helps the creative process.

But I will at least say that for a genre that is filled to the brim with stereotypical and formulaic slashers, this film was trying to do something a little different.

The story starts with a family reunion - five "cousins" from five close-knit families are called up to the old plantation where their ancestors were once enslaved for a get-together with their Elders. There was some confusion of people writing reviews thinking it was weird that two of these cousins were in a relationship, but they establish that these five are not actually related. Back in the days of slavery, there was a mysterious African shaman who was lynched but survived. He ensnared five slave families with promises of freedom, power, wealth and prosperity if they made sacrifices to him. Agreeing to do so, these families have stayed incredibly close to one another throughout the generations, considering themselves different branches of one spiritual family.

As far as these young people are concerned, it's just a weird family story. The real purpose of them meeting up with their Elders is so they can ask for some financial help.

In my opinion, the premise had promise. It kind of ties together the tropes commonly found in both witchcraft ritual horror and slasher films and it's interesting to see the concept of "evil ancient African magic" from the perspective of a film with an all-African-American cast (except for two out-of-place white people... guess who dies first?)

The performances were solid, but the script was really weak. The characters are put into an inescapable situation far too early in the film and don't make many intelligent attempts to save themselves, despite an obvious desire to. Toward the end, it seems that they wrote themselves into a corner: characters who know they have no chance of getting out of there simply jump into danger as if the writer didn't know how else to get rid of them. Because of this, the film doesn't really have an ending, which is it's biggest flaw.

Do I recommend this movie? Not really. It isn't great. Hell, it isn't even really good, but it fell into the following criteria:

1) I made it through to the end credits.
2) I didn't regret watching it.
3) I've seen a hell of a lot worse.

So, no. Sorry Netflixers. It's not the worst movie ever. It had the potential to be something much better, with a really strong cast, some good visual effects, and an interesting story idea. The script and storytelling was too weak to save it from being a 2.5 out of 5 in my book.

Horror Movie Horrors: Fright Night (2011)

 The Fright Night remake wasn't really on my radar as far as must-see-movies were concerned. I have a long standing love of the vampire genre, but most of the films tend to disappoint me. From the trailers I saw (which, granted, were brief and infrequent) it looked like your oh-so-predictable teen flick that I felt I could summarize without even seeing: the virgins and/or drug users will get killed, the kid will find out about a vampire but no one will believe him, his parents will be unwitting obstacles to what he needs to accomplish, he will seek advice from an unwilling or unreliable Van Helsing, his girlfriend will be in peril and he'll figure out a way to save the day. Roll credits.

And this is without having seen the first film.

The first act of the film unfortunately played into my expectations - it seemed incredibly slow because I knew what was most likely going to happen and therefore no tension was built up. It wasn't bad, I just felt like I was watching an episode of a tv show I'd seen before.

Yes, I'm talking about you.

If I wasn't a fan of the genre and hadn't seen many films like this, the first act probably wouldn't have bothered me. It really establishes the main characters and the environment they live in. I just felt that, at times, the pacing was a little slow because I was waiting for the main character to know what I was already told in the trailer: Your neighbor is a vampire, try not to get eaten.

But things really picked up for the better in acts two and three. Without giving too much away, it was refreshing to see a vampire really take initiative and really pursue those who pose a threat to him rather than do nothing while the main characters stew and fret over the situation. The way the main character's mother was written was also a nice change. At one point, she is put into a situation in which she is asked not to answer the door. She has no reason to believe that she shouldn't, but because her son pleads with her to trust him and do as he says, she leaves the door unanswered. Rather than falling back on the same-old-same-old storytelling of automatically pitting the skeptical parent in the way of the teen protagonist, they subtly showed that their relationship is more realistic and complex than the average cardboard cut-out that we often get as parents in a teen flick.

Without gushing too much or going too fan girlish: this was the main reason I saw this film:

Totally going to be my new desktop wallpaper.

To anyone who doesn't recognize him: that is David Tennant doing his best Russel Brand impersonation. I really have to give both him and the screenwriter credit for how his character is introduced: as our unwilling Van Helsing, he initially comes across as shallow, selfish, and a bit of a prick. However, while our main character gets his first chance to talk to him one-on-one, he slowly sheds the physical facade of his stage persona: he removes his wig, fake piercings, and starts wiping away the "tattoos" that cover his neck and chest. I could be reading into this, but it really seemed like a brilliant but subtle way to tell the audience that Peter Vincent is a more developed and meaningful character than your first impressions would indicate. (Note, the following clip is trimmed down for time.)

I felt like everyone gave great performances in this film. It wasn't campy like I'm told the first Fright Night was, but the film didn't take itself too seriously. It was very genuine about the whole situation: what do you do if you're put in such an unbelievable situation - especially when lives are at stake?

It doesn't over-romanticize vampires: there is definitely a sex factor to Colin Farrell's character, but sex and attraction is used as a ploy to lure in victims. The film consciously responds to the Twilight version of vampires and makes it clear that this is taking us back to the vampires that made you hide under the covers as opposed to the ones who just stand there and watch you sleep because they're possessive  obsessed  "romantic".

Speaking of sex, I also liked how teenage sexuality was represented here. Rather than having the hot girl who wants to have sex be represented as a slut, talking about whether or not to have sex is simply a part of being a teenager in an intimate relationship. There isn't really any pressure whether or not to have sex- it's expressed at one point as just a "let's get under the covers and see what happens" situation. And when sex is going to occur for the first time, talking about whether or not they really want to is represented, albiet briefly. I just feel like this is more realistic and therefore makes it seem more genuine. From personal experience, and what I've heard from just about any one else I've talked to about sex, many teens/young adults feel they were a bit duped by how people fly passionately into each other's arms and sex simply happens rather than a couple deciding, whether through a long conversation ("Do you really feel you're ready for that sort of thing?") or a short one ("Wanna have sex?" "Sure.").

Given how much praise I have for the screenplay, it should have come as no surprise that it came from Marti Noxon - a writer/producer who I've loved for quite some time for her work with shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and others. Also, for her cameo in the musical episode "Once More With Feeling":

All-in-all: Go see Fright Night. It's well written, well directed, and the performances are more than you would normally expect to see from your average teen horror flick.

Nerd vs Geek vs Being a Girl

I am a bit of a word-nut. I love discovering etymologies and following the historical changes in word usage. I was never one to sit and read the dictionary for fun, but in some ways I'm a little surprised that I never did.

I have other academic texts that I read 'just for fun'.

But the dictionary isn't much help when it comes to this question. According to Google's dictionary, there is some difference, but it is subtle.

Nerd - 1) A foolish or contemptible person who lacks social skills or is boringly studious 2) An intelligent, single-minded expert in a particular technical discipline or profession.


Geek - 1) an unfashionable or socially inept person 2) person with an eccentric devotion to a particular interest 3) a carnival performer who does particularly wild or disgusting acts.

If you get this reference, I love you all the more.

We can obviously disregard the carnival definition, as it's obviously not the useage most common today. Or else this site would be dedicated to a curvy woman who likes doing odd things to chickens or some such thing.

Both definitions describe someone with a lack of social graces, someone who is not socially desirable, and both have elements of expertise or obsession in a subject (with or without practical application).

In broadening the search to looking into the origins of these words, it also doesn't really clear things up. Geek comes from geck, a Scottish word meaning fool, which some have attributed to Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Nerd isn't all that old, popping up in the 50s, and it's not really clear why it started being used. Dr. Seus used the word as a nonsensical in If I Ran the Zoo, and some theorize that kids decided to insult one another with this cool sounding word. Others claim the word knurd (the reverse of drunk) was coined by students describing those of their peers who were a bit too studious.

 I've found myself having a number of conversations with people about the difference between 'nerd' and 'geek'. I'll start out by stressing that the English language has a lot of variation to it - while there are set definitions to words, the way they are used an differentiated varies not only between regions of the world but simply from person to person. 

A collection of what the internet tells us about geeks and nerds:

Venn Diagram from Great White Snark

Geek - Very knowledgeable of a specific topic (electronics, comic books, etc)
Nerd - Very knowledgeable across a wide variety of subjects (book smart)
Dork - socially awkward and not mutually exclusive of nerd/geek. - toomuch at MetaFilter

Geek is a term of admiration, nerd is a term of ambivalence, and dork is a term of derision.  - gyusan at MetaFilter

To me nerd is socially related, and geek is interest related.... I think of geekdom as something you can be obsessed with, something to collect, what do you watch, what do you look up in the internet (which didn't exist during my first experiences in geekdom). To me, a nerd is more of a social position. - Mayim Bialik, (Big Bang Theory, Blossom)

 No nerd calculates so hard, gets such perfect grades, to be called a geek. Likewise, no geek spends 3 weeks putting together the perfect steam punk ensemble to be called a nerd. Too many people use the terms “geek” and “nerd” almost interchangeably. While the key differences between the two may be relatively minor to some, they are critical to those in the know. - WolfGnards.com

How do I weigh in on things? 

For one thing, I think that nerd and geek are far more interchangeable than some word purists want to believe. I actually don't know anyone who self identifies as a geek who would care about being called a nerd, any more than they would care about being called a geek. It would depend on the context in which the word was being used rather than which word was chosen. A geek whose geeky friend laughingly calls them a nerd because they're excited about the way they took out a Legion outpost on the outskirts of New Vegas is probably not going to react differently because of the word choice. Someone who is trying to insult someone by calling them a geek or a nerd probably won't win any points by picking one other the other.

That being said, there are elements of social awkwardness to nerd that I personally don't see applying to geek, just as there are elements of fandom obsession in geek that aren't necessarily in nerd. But it's not like there is a brick wall between the two terms. A male nerd can be a Star Wars geek and not know how to talk to girls without promptly making an awkward ass of himself. A female gaming geek can be a total textbook nerd in an academic subject that interests her (RE: first picture posted in this article).


How does being a girl fit into all of this?

I'll reassure anyone who may feel like any mention of gender differences is an instant warning sign that the writer is about to go into an extreme anti-men rant about how the world would be much better without penises. Far from it. But I think it is interesting to look at how femininity fits into the geek world. 

She has nice boobs, but is that necessary?

 Let's take Kari Byron for example. When she was hired, it was not to be a host in front of the camera. She repeatedly showed up to Jamie's M5 Industries workshops with a desire to get hired by his special effects company. She worked behind the scenes until being put in front of the camera with any regularity, and has said that she found it uncomfortable and difficult to act naturally at first when getting more screen time. Yet she is repeatedly accused of being the token female. 

I feel like I've had challenges constantly while being on "Mythbusters," a lot of backlash like “That's the only reason you're on the show, you're a token girl”, which is absolutely not the case. I worked really hard to get on this show, And I do everything that everyone else on the show does. I laugh at those comments now and I kind of take it as a compliment, like, “Oh, you just said I was pretty. I'll take that.” Because I don't validate anything else that you've said.

 But she's still photographed in a provocatively sexy manner when promoting the show. Is this her fault? No. But it does add fuel to the fire when people think she's only there to be a pretty pair of boobs.


In the same interview, Kari and Mayim talked about the pretty girl nerd:

Bialik: I was on the floor at Comic -Con and there as a gorgeous, five-foot-nine, busty woman in a teeny, tiny Ewok outfit with tattoos and her belly out, and she wore a button that said “I love nerd girls.” And this is my bias, you know, but I thought, “You don't look anything like a nerd girl. You're stunning, you have an awesome stomach, you're wearing an Ewok bikini, you're busty, you're tall.” And I'm thinking, wow, how much the image has changed. She was at least ten years younger than me. And I was thinking, its like the 3rd wave of feminism... 3rd wave is like “I can look however I want, you still have no right to challenge me about my intellect. But it was just so funny because that would never have been my image of a geek...

Byron: I've noticed sort of a backlash against attractive girls that happen to be nerds or gamers, almost constantly challenging the fact that's they're nerds or geeks as if there's no way that's a possibility...

 Female attractiveness is often a source of social division. Traditional beauty adds social value (statistically more likely to get hired for better paying jobs, get services at discounts, etc.) and is many times used to categorize women into the physical haves and have-nots.

What I find interesting and strange is how the geek/nerd community has twisted this hierarchy around somewhat. Lots of geeks want to go to conventions to see the busty cosplaying Slave Leias, but also deny them a level of legitimacy as nerds because of their attractive appearance. On the other hand, a Catwoman whose got a little extra weight on her than the comic book ideal won't be as flocked-to by those snapping pictures, but is taken more seriously if she starts discussing the intricacies of Dungeons and Dragons.

On a personal note, I think that these kinds of hierarchies or fights over who is a 'real' geek do more harm than good. It's similar to a branch of the body acceptance movement that berates the slender body image popularized by the media, saying that "real women" are larger and curvier. Does that make the women who are naturally thin somehow not real? Are you less of a woman because of the size and shape of your body? Who gets to decide what is the "real" body that typifies womanhood, because isn't that the kind of behavior that you're objecting to in the first place?

Horror Movie Horrors: White Noise 2

Oh God.

Where do I even begin?


As you can imagine, I was not going into White Noise 2 expecting it to be a good movie. I remember seeing a booth promo'ing this straight-to-DVD thing back in 2006 at Comic-con. (Man, I need to get my ass back there. It's been too long.) Consider that it's taken me about 3 years to get around to watching it, despite having some very compelling reasons to be interested in it.

Okay, only one reason to be interested in it.

Fillion is good in it. I don't say that as a fan girl apologist. With what he is given, he gives a fairly believable performance. But this film has a horrible premise, followed by a terrible conclusion. It's not quite 'horribafuckus', but it's pretty damn close.

TMNT 3 was my favorite as a child. :(

In fact, many of the performances range from great to at least decent. The actors can't really take blame for the badness of this film. For example, Katee Sackhoff, while given very little to work with, is able to show her character as reasonable, strong and still vulnerable. Though she does suffer from the writers not knowing how to use her properly. For example, I know that it's a common trope to have women be incapable of fighting back while the men folk jump in to throw the punches but watching Starbuck flail about, smacking a guy repeatedly with her purse when he just tried to slit her throat is just ridiculous. Hell, watching any woman respond that way just seems silly.

It's like some weird Firefly/Battlestar Galactica crossover fan fic.

And that's the core problem to this film: the script. It is just simply poorly written. First off: this movie isn't about EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena). At all. It's a sequel to a movie about EVP. It advertises itself as a movie about EVP. Hell, it even has an awkward tie in trying to convince you that this is in fact a movie about EVP. It isn't. It's about near death experiences allowing someone to see when someone was about to die. That concept has nothing at all to do with EVP. This movie should have just embraced that fact and not tried to bend over backwards to make it fit into a franchise that it had nothing to do with. Not that it would have made it a good film. Just potentially better and less awkwardly written from the start. That, and they probably wouldn't have had as many TV-static themed jump scares.

"Bitch, I don't even need electronics. I'm just a spooky granny in an elevator - FEAR ME!"

The movie isn't scary in the least. It's a series of jump scares. Not only that - jump scares with no suspense to lead you into them. I've seen screamers with more skill in crafting their jump scares than this film. (I can still remember when I first encountered kikia... Dammit, Matt. You woke up my whole house with that one.)

A good jump scare (trust me, there are such rarities in existence) occur when the film builds suspense and then plays against the audience's expectations. They direct your attention to under the kid's bed. You know something is going to pop out and scare him as little Timmy leans down, slowly, oh so slowly, his breaths shallow and swift and his heart pounding in his ears. He lifts back the bed skirt and...

Nothing comes out from under the bed. The film plays against your expectation of something scary being under the bed, builds suspense, but doesn't deliver there. They deliver in the creepy jump scare that happens when Timmy decides he's safe and goes for a glass of water, but gets eaten by something in the hallway between his bedroom and the kitchen.

Poor little Timmy.

This film is also generally confused when it comes to back story. Let's break this down as if we were the ones constructing the plot. It has it's central plot device: Dude can see when people are going to die. Dude saves people from dying. Seems like the beginning of a super hero plot. But this is a horror movie. There has to be a negative consequence for it all, right? We can't just have a guy going about and saving people without something bad happening because of it, right? So, we make it so that he's disrupting their fates: these people were supposed to die anyway and in three days of them being saved, they die some horrible death that takes some other people out with them.

So why do they die in three days?

Answer: the Devil.

That's it, really. They try to tie it into this confused twist about how Christ rose on the third day, so the Devil kills people who were supposed to die on the third day... you know what, I'm not going to waste time trying to explain it. The movie certainly doesn't.

The Devil did it. Three days. Yadda yadda. Moving on.

White Noise 2 is a confused mess from beginning to end. Thank goodness I have much better things to watch Fillion and Sackhoff in. I'd imagine most of these actors (even the mediocre ones) are far too good for this movie.

How to make Anansi White?

A man as brilliant as his hair is strange.

In reading a recent interview with Neil Gaiman something interesting popped out at me:

"I don’t like it when black characters become white in movies, or things like that. That was something I found deeply problematic with the attempt by some people who had a lot of money and a lot of clout, and who wanted the rights to Anansi Boys, at one point. Somewhere in there, they made the fatal mistake of saying to me, “And, of course, the characters won’t be black in the movie because black people don’t like fantasy.” They were suddenly very surprised that we were no longer interested in selling them the book."

What in the world? Why on Earth would anyone want to re-cast Anansi Boys as not Black (pressumably White)? How? What? Why?

Spoilers ahead. If you haven't read the book, immediately go to your bookseller of choice and buy it. There's also a very good audiobook recording of it floating around the internet. It is brilliant. One of my favorite books.

Get it. Read it. Love it.

Ok, let's dig into this.

This is a story about Afican gods and the son/sons of one African god in particular - Anansi, the spider. The story is steeped in African mythology and modern African American culture. While it is written by a white Englishman, it gives what feels like a very authentic and respectful nod to the mysticism of African American culture, particularly in the South East.

(Note: There is some debate as to whether or not Anansi is really considered a god or just a character in a number of fables. As the book takes the god perspective, I'm going to refer to him as such.)

Anansi is the spider out of a number of West African folk tales, presented in the book as a trickster god and the keeper of stories. The stories he is in often focus around his sly ways of fooling others for the benefit of himself:

I remember hearing stories of Anansi and others as a child, even though I was fairly culturally separated from their origin. While not incredibly common in the US, these stories are still told widely through West Africa and Jamaica. (If they're common elsewhere, I'd love to know more.)

That's one of the beauties of Anansi Boys. While it is told from the perspective of a modern day African American man who seems to have a bit of a disliking for his past (particularly because of his father's antics), it is deeply rooted in the stories and mythos of the "Old World" as it were.

So how on Earth could you recast the main characters as anything but Black?

Anansi is the father of the main character and his "brother". If you recast these brothers as not black, then would Anansi himself not be African? Were the movie makers intending on making Anansi any race they wanted to because he wasn't human and therefore could take any form? What about the friends and family, whose characterizations are very closely tied to their cultural and racial identities?

And would these movie makers not consider the implications of taking an African god and casting him or his children as not African?

I'm generally in support of color blind casting. For example, having a mix of races representing the gods in Thor was a pleasant surprise for me. While those characters should, in the purest sense of the mythos they are based on, be Nordic, having a mixed-race cast gave it an interesting diversity that didn't bother me in the slightest or take me out of the film.

I loved this guy. Seriously. Awesome casting, as far as I'm concerned.

 There are grey areas in color blind casting, like the issue over the "racist" casting for extras in the Hobbit. I still don't really know where I stand on that one. Did Tolkein specify the skin color of the hobbits? No. But he was writing an alternative mythology for the peoples of Western Europe, particularly England - ethnically, white. And he specified that the people to the South who fought under Sauron were dark skinned. So, is it wrong to cast light skinned people as hobbits? In fitting with how the racial makeup was presented in the Lord of the Rings series, it would make sense to keep them pale. But is it racism?

Pic Barely Related

And if it is racism to cast only white people because of the cultural setting, would it have been racist to cast only Asian actors in the Avatar: The Last Airbender film? After all, that film should be cast as all Asian due to it's cultural inspirations. (Personally, I would have preferred that. However, a shitty film is still a shitty film despite the race of the actors involved.)

That's part of a store-bought Aang costume. Nightmare fuel.

So yes, there are grey areas when it comes to racial casting, and there always will be. But when the race of the characters is so ingrained in who and what they are...

Let's just say, I'm glad someone was dumb enough to tell Gaiman of their casting choices before they got the rights to the book.

PS - Just a note about strange book cover designs:

I found that under the listing for a Japanese copy of Anansi Boys. Um, what? Why is there a chubby white angel on the cover? Does that really describe a book about African folklore that has nothing to do with angels or Judeo-Christian mythology?

All I can say: Oy.

Agree? Disagree? Let me know! As long as we keep things civil, I'm happy to host some debate and discussion.

The Downside to Boob Armor

Fantasy armor and femininity. Fun topic, huh?

College Humor's recent short on the subject makes for a good laugh. It got me thinking on the subject though, in relation to my endless search for attractive armor.

 

I tend to struggle with armor in games, because I will always play as a woman if I am given the option. I simply prefer to play as a female. (Even when I was a little girl, I'd be wondering why there were only two female Power Rangers, or why there was only one woman I could kick ass with in the original Mortal Kombat, until the second one, where three more were introduced. I didn't want or expect an all woman roster in the shows and games I was into. It just bugged me that they were always outnumbered. Just had to get that out there. Back to the topic at hand.)

Pictured: the Topic

When it comes to female armor, I am almost always at a loss. Games with female armor are usually in one of two camps: the "realistic" or the ridiculous. The 'realistic' essentially believes that women would just put on armor designed for men. After all, even though this is a world in which women fight, why would they want or need anything different than the menfolk? The ridiculous plays right into the hands of the concept of the male gaze. Women are dressed for the benefit of their male companions - most importantly, the player who is assumed to be male. They are there to look sexy to the observer, having armor that is essentially useless when put into a battle scenario.

Don't believe me? Rooster Teeth tested it out with Ivy and Sophitia from Soul Calibur.

 Many of the games I play will give you lots of options in bulky plate armor, but they look huge and awkward on their female bodies. I tend to play as rouges rather than tanks, so I want to maintain the illusion that my character can move around swiftly without sounding like an Everything Must Go sale in the kitchen section of a Bed Bath and Beyond. I want something that is attractive, but obviously functional as armor.

Functional - definition: not this.

Outside of what gender I play, I like having attractive and custom armor. I like mods that let me pick and choose the aesthetics of the game I am playing. Custom eye colors, hair styles, and of course custom clothing and armor. If I'm going to be staring at the outfit for hours on end, I'd like it to be something that appeals to me.

 

Thus, my dilema. See, many (if not most, depending on the game) mods will give you the ability to role play that Battle Stripper you've always been dreaming about, but not much else. I gave up on looking for mods in Oblivion for females, as most of what I found were focused on giving them breasts that are individually larger than their head and next-to-nothing to wear to cover them up. 

Oh, and the argument that it's to maintain their agility is BS. You can maintain your agility while still covering your vital organs and wearing something that won't cause your ta-tas to fall out. Boob flashing is most likely not going to be a very effective form of self defense if the person you're fighting really does intend to kill you. 

Now, I'm not going to say that super "sexy" female armor shouldn't be available - far from it. What right would I have to demand that sexy armor mods not exist simply because they don't fulfill the needs I'm looking for? Hell, I've even contributed to the sexification of female armor in art, albeit my motivations were more out of humor rather than fappery. 

My take on the "mage's robes" from Dragon Age.

I just wish there was more variety. I wish there was something in between the very masculine and the grotesquely masturbatory "feminine". Those designs to exist.  

These armors: Protection + being hotter than you ever will be.

So there. Rant over, I suppose. I guess I just need to take some time to learn to make my own armor mods, so I can kick ass as a woman who doesn't look like she's just there to encourage splooge production.

Green Lantern's Not Shining Bright, but Not Completely Dim

My fiance is a huge Green Lantern fan. Huge. Outside of just reading comics, he owns two Green Lantern hats, one Green Lantern shirt, and a denim jacket that I stitched the Lantern logo onto the back of. He and I have watched each of the animated Green Lantern stories. He would have a Green Lantern ring of his own if he didn't have a chronic case anti-jewelry-itis.

Part of a comic I drew for him for Christmas. Seriously. He's that into it.

So when he and I heard they were making a Green Lantern movie, we were understandably excited. Seeing a fan trailer for it starring one of our favorite actors didn't hurt, either:

Alas, it was not to be. We knew it wasn't a real trailer, but it got us both jazzed about the possibility of an awesome film. Unlike many other superhero stories, Green Lantern really dances along the line between traditional superhero and traditional science fiction. Hollywood can make awesome science fiction movies, so why not an awesome sci-fi superhero flick?

Then Ryan Reynolds was cast. Not a terrible choice, but we weren't expecting a great performance out of him. Then pictures of the goofy-ass costume came out. Then the first trailer hit. Oh boy. With questionable CGI and costumes that looked bizarrely painted-on, I was worried.

It's like Zorro decided to start LARP'ing as a wood elf.

We saw the film together, decked out in Green Lantern gear, and I was half-expecting to duck out of there at the end of the film, hiding behind the brim of my hat, ashamed to be seen in a fandom associated with that crappy film (If Avatar: The Last Airbender's movie could do that to me, Green Lantern certainly could. Thank goodness I didn't buy any merch for that movie before it came out. Yeesh.)

And then it happened. The movie didn't suck.

It wasn't a miraculous piece of film making, but it wasn't terrible. The story was easy to follow and they covered most of the basics. There were definite weaknesses, but it wasn't a travesty. Reynolds didn't play the smarmy jack ass I expected out of him, but he didn't turn Hal into a cardboard cut out with no personality.

If anything, I think the movie had some serious editing issues. The decision to use Parallax created a lead into making the Yellow ring for the next film. The changes they made to Hammond created an interesting parallel to Hal (both given powers by their contact with alien life, one for good and one for evil), though they did little with this parallel to make the characters foils of one another. They gave us a decent look at Oa and some of the other Lanterns who often play crucial roles in Hal's interactions with the Corps. But spending so much time on his friends and family, his love interest, his job situation, etc. made the film really bloated and made me wish I could have seen more of what makes Hal's story stand out from the others. Nearly every superhero movie focuses, at least in part, on the hero's love interest. They just didn't need that in this movie. There was so much interesting material to work with in the Corps - the politics of the Guardians, the mentor/antagonistic relationship between Hal and Sinestro, etc.

Over at pajiba, they make an interesting point about the editing of this film:

One thing I feel needs mentioning: this is not Martin Campbell’s cut of the film, but the studio’s. I live in New Orleans where it was shot, I read the shooting script, all of which was painstakingly filmed with intense research, and all of that was left on the cutting room floor — a sort of combination of what happened to Daredevil and Watchmen, respectively — character development sacrificed for CG, scenes made irrelevant by removing their setup. The movie in the theater starts with an explanation of mythos that is made redundant by the more natural, scripted questions from Hal when he gets the ring. Ten minutes of childhood Hal, Carol, and Hector that sets up Hal’s first ring construct is reduced to an awkwardly placed flashback in the middle of another scene. The training with the ring is almost completely excised except for one minor scene. Most appallingly, the ending completely deletes the fact that Kilowog, Sinestro, and Toma-Re arrive at the end and help Hal defeat Parallax. Not to mention Parallax was supposed to be a 3rd act reveal after we spend the film worried about Hammond going evil, not the main villain for the entire film. I sincerely hope we get a director’s cut or at least all the deleted scenes on the video release.

So, maybe a director's cut is in order. Would it be any better? It depends. If they leave in all of the content that it has in the final release but inject a ton of extra scenes, I think it may still feel bloated and out of place. The sequences with Parallax seemed very tacked on and disconnected from the rest of the film. Not only that, but the threat that Parallax poses against the galaxy seemed played down once they finally got to the big show-down. Placing in exclusively in the third act would increase the sense of danger he poses, rather than having him float around the galaxy while the Lanterns talk up how destructive he can be.

I would definitely be interested in what they cut from Killawog, Toma-Re and Sinestro. Some people think that there was too much Sinestro in this film, but I think there wasn't really enough. They hinted at it, but I feel like his relationship to Hal as a comerade is much more important in setting him up as a [SPOILERS] villain [/SPOILERS] than giving face time to his girl-back-home. I don't think that he needed much more screen time if they had used what time he was given more effectively. He's not all buddy-buddy with Hal, but if they're going off of Secret Origin (the comic that I believe they cited as inspiration) then Sinestro should be a bit more of a mentor, like the sensei who doesn't particularly like his pupil, but still aims to push him to be better.

This movie wasn't terrible and it definitely deserves a sequel rather than having to scrap it and start over.

If you want a better way to be introduced to the series, check out the animated Green Lantern: First Flight.

I finally got my Nathan Fillion as Hal Jordan in the follow up animated piece Green Lantern: Emerald Knights. It's also pretty awesome and will give you a lot of the history of the Corps without being a total exposition dump. I highly recommend it. Still, it's not a piece that focuses heavily on Hal specifically, so it doesn't really fulfill the desire to see Nathan take on the role.

One day, Fillion. One day.

Agree? Disagree? Then let me know. Leave a comment below. I don't claim my word as law. Keep it civil and I'm all up for discussion and debate.

Casual vs. Hardcore: What Makes a Gamer?

I've heard a lot of discussion about casual gaming - what defines it and whether or not it poses a "threat" to hardcore gamers.

Why would anybody care about the intricacies of gamer labeling? Many times, these arguments are made with the aim of placing one group against the other: the casual gamers aren't "real" gamers and are "posers" for trying to move into a subculture that has been established for years, while the hardcore gamers are people (mostly male) who live in their parents' basement and have no social lives due to their obsessive attachment to racking up the most headshots. Both views are based solely on stereotype and these arguments, in many instances, are aimed at dividing the gaming culture: the true gamers from those who simply play games. 

Let's try to break down this monstrosity. I have heard a number of ways of defining a casual gamer vs. a hardcore gamer. However, most arguments come down to three main factors:

1) number of hours playing

2) type of game being played

3) the difficulty at which the gamer chooses to play

Right away, I see some problems with this.

Let's take this hypothetical woman as an example: She plays Bejeweled with a seriousness and dedication that many would put toward training for a chess tournament. Hour after hour she sits, racking up points. She is always near the top of the leaderboard, meaning she out-performs the average skill level of the average player.

Breaking it down by the numbers:
1) she plays a lot of hours of Bejeweled and is on par with a hardcore gamer who spends the same amount of time questing in World of Warcraft. Does this make her a hardcore gamer?

2)But wait, the game she is playing is Bejeweled, one of the games that almost defines the casual gaming genre with how often it is used as an example by people having this debate. If Bejeweled is the quintessential casual game, then you must be a casual gamer if you play it, correct?

3) Difficulty is subjective. On the surface, Bejeweled is a very simple game. It only has a few criteria that one must keep in mind in order to play it. In that sense, it is an incredibly simple game. It does not require you make a difficult series of jumps and navigate a physical puzzle like many platformers, nor do you have to manage your health bar and eliminate threats while proceeding to your objective. You can lose the game and start over, but you don't necessarily have to approach your whole strategy differently as you would if, say, playing Mass Effect and realizing that the route you were trying to take through the enemy base was not allowing you enough cover and that if you run past the giant hangar and into a smaller corridor, you can funnel your enemies into a much more manageable shoot-out.

I find these discussions problematic because they start to meander into blurring the very lines their argument has tried to create. Does that really help us better understand whether or not we can call this Bejeweled Master a casual gamer? That's not even touching on the subject of the variety of games she plays. If she plays Bejeweled and only Bejeweled, does that make her a casual gamer? What about XXRageKillAholicXX on Xbox who plays hours of Halo? Would he be a casual gamer because he's not playing a wide variety of games, even though he is playing a game that is more "hardcore" than Bejeweled? (Apologies, XXRageKillAholicXX if you do indeed exist. If so, kudos on an interesting choice of gamertag.)

Somehow, I imagine this is what you'd look like.

And this isn't even touching on the subject of gendering the casual vs. the hardcore gamers. I guess I should save that can of worms for another day. Long and short of it: there are women who have long term relationships with their consoles of choice, just as there are men who want to play the occasional game of Tetris on their phone and be done with it.

The "Threat" of Casual Gaming?

Some of you may be wondering what the "threat" is that hardcore gamers are so worried about? In part, with the sudden rise of casual gaming, there is a fear that developers will stop funding projects that are aimed at the hardcore gaming group. After all, if a casual game can be played by both the hardcore and the casual gamers, then wouldn't it financially make more sense to fund the latest iteration of Angry Birds rather than put time, money and a lot of technological investment into making LA Noire, which doesn't tie in nicely to an established, successful game genre and pushes the boundaries of animated character's emotive abilities? Both Angry Birds and LA Noire are great games, but the latter implies more financial risk. There is more time and money invested in the development with a potentially smaller number of gamers who are willing to risk putting down $50+ on a game they may not enjoy.

I fully understand and sympathize with the concerns that casual gaming may bump out games that are more challenging. After all, I'm some where in between the casual and the hardcore gamer, and I regularly struggle with not finding enough games that strike my fancy. I think it would be a serious mistake for the market to focus on one niche at the exclusion of all others. Economically speaking, that would simply flood the market with multiple versions of very similar games, creating too much competition. If gaming companies provide a variety of types of games, then they have a better chance of seeing success.

The one thing I don't sympathize as much with is the snobbery of difficulty levels. It's great that you can beat Dragon Age in Nightmare mode in your sleep. Why, though, were forums lit up with complaints about the developers of Dragon Age II expressing concern that the difficulty was too hard for certain gamers and so they would make sure that the Easy mode they provided before did not set the difficulty so high that it frustrated players who found themselves overwhelmed in the first game? Even after repeated assurances that the game would still have multiple levels of difficulty and that Nightmare mode would still exist, people were bitching and moaning about people having to have a "dumbed down" version of the game.

Now, there are legitimate complaints about the difficulties being unbalanced in Dragon Age II - but that's not the issue at hand. The primary complaint, before the game came out, came across more like "I'm such a bad ass, all you whimps can suck it" as opposed to a legitimate concern for their gameplay experience being compromised.

There seems to be a general disdain for casual and easy modes. I simply cannot understand it. If you don't want to play a game on Easy or Casual, then don't. Most of the games that provide a number of difficulty levels will provide you with at least two, if not more, difficulties above Easy. So what if a game developer wants to make the game accessible to a wider variety of gamers with different skill sets? It means they're more likely to sell more copies of the game, thus making more money and being able to fund future projects. I'm legitimately curious about this - does it all boil down to a dick-measuring contest about what a skilled player you are, or are there real reasons that effect your gaming experience if a game provides a difficulty level below what you play in?

So, what's the point?

Gamers are gamers. If you play games, you are a gamer. The more we try to create these mostly-arbitrary labels for each group, the more we're going to convince the men and women with the big bucks funding game developers that there are only two types of players they need to market to. The more limited we become in who is and isn't a purveyor of fine gaming entertainment, the more limited our selection of games for sale could potentially be.

The gaming world is expanding and changing. It has always been constantly evolving. So, there should be just as much room at the table for the social gamers, the casual gamers, the hardcore gamers, and the rest of us who aren't scared to pick up a controller and kick some digital ass.

I don't pretend to be an expert. Disagree with me? Feel free to let me know in the comments. As long as you keep things civil, I'm all for debate.

X-Men: First Class Review (w/ some spoilers)

I posted this video on Youtube after the film came out - but considering the subject, I figure it makes sense to share it here:

Some light film analysis. More serious content to follow.