#I’m pretty sure this is the plot of a golden age comic but I’m throwing this into the universe anyway

[nofacednerd]

If Jor-El had a beard that means Kryptonians can grow facial hair but Clark doesn’t have any so like… how does he shave

[davidmann95]

SO the three jokers is finally done! what do you think of this final issue/the mini as a whole?

Anonymous said: How about all them Jokers?

Anonymous said: So Three Jokers ended. Was this peak Johns? Will he finally let poor Alan Moore rest in peace now that he took the axe to the work Moore has already disowned anyway?

I’m not going to talk all that much about Three Jokers in a plot sense - except for major spoilers regarding the very ending, because it’s impossible to discuss the point without it - but that’s actually pretty easy, because almost everything here is weightless. Jason and Barbara do not matter. The big loud proclamations of this being about Trauma and our ability or inability to move forward with our lives with it do not matter. One, arguably even two out of three Jokers don’t matter. Nothing changes or matters coming out of it, the “is it canon even though it’s Black Label?!” debate was misguided all along because it has just as much impact either way, every tease of significance not even a gag, but at best a pratfall.

Before getting to what DOES matter, at least as far as Geoff Johns is concerned: this comic is hilarious. I don’t want to spoil any of the ways it’s hilarious if you somehow haven’t seen any of them, but this is the storytelling tone-deafness and desperation for achieving The Biggest Moment You’ve Ever Seen no longer merely every issue, but every panel, of Justice League-era Johns, mixed with the faux-formalism and haughtiness of Doomsday Clock Johns. The result is the closest thing I’ve ever read to professionally published fanfiction in the most archetypal sense, except that in most actual fanfiction Jason Todd would’ve kissed a boy and/or he and Barbara Gordon would have talked about their feelings in an actually substantial sense, so something productive would have come of this. I’m talking about the bad fanfiction folks, and it’s frequently a delight.

Oh, and Jason Fabok, Brad Anderson, and Rob Leigh deserve lots of credit for making this gorgeous, but not enough to excuse their involvement. Also ‘Joker wants to engineer Batman’s catharsis with Joe Chill because he doesn’t want Batman to hate or fear anyone more than him’ is a great idea that deserved to be in a better comic, so compliments(?) to that aspect as well.

Alright SO

The key to the whole thing is that the identities of the three Jokers went through three iterations prior to publication. When initially announced, it was Golden Age Joker, Killing Joke Joker, and Snyder/Capullo Joker. A little while later in interviews he discussed it as Golden Age Joker, Silver Age Joker, and Killing Joke Joker. In the comic it’s nominally supposed to be Golden Age Joker, Death In The Family Joker, and Killing Joke Joker, but in practice I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be Silver/Bronze Age Joker still rather than DITF? Initially I thought it was *purely* laziness, and I’m sure it was 90% that, but the real point is that it was always Original vs. 80s, with an inconsequential spare thrown in so Johns could call it Three Jokers, because jokes come...in threes!

And then of course 80s Joker, the Joker Geoff Johns likes because that’s what he grew up with, not only kills Golden Age Joker but reveals that he was in fact the real original Joker, because fuck even the progression and structure of linear time, only the Geoff Johns version matters. The premise of Three Jokers, a book that Johns had four years to write and spent four years trying to hype us up on is that fuck you, person who buys Three Jokers, for wanting three Jokers, because that implies the possibility of a multiplicity of interpretations of characters instead of their only ever being one true correct take as defined by Geoff Johns. Also said defined interpretation is in this case UNKNOWABLE, MYSERIOUS CHAOS! but also Killing Joke’s maybe-real-maybe-not-open-to-interpretation flashbacks are now 100% officially the canon Joker origin because again there can be no room for deviation from his Correct Take on the DCU.

This is not a comic about Batman - Geoff Johns doesn’t give a shit about Batman, I suspect because it’s difficult at this point to be transgressive with him compared to his peers - and it’s not even really a comic about Joker. It’s a comic about fuck Bill Finger and Jerry Robinson, fuck Gardner Fox and Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams and Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers, fuck Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo, and thanks a ton Alan Moore and Brian Bolland but also fuck you too for getting vague and later uppity. Only Geoff Johns’ favorite comics have ever mattered or ever will, and if you disagree you are his enemy and Joker will personally kill whatever inferior version of a character you incorrectly like instead. He will have Joker say who he is doesn’t matter, and then in the last two pages reveal who Joker is, while Batman in the last panel speaks for the author by agreeing with the thesis that who Joker is doesn’t matter, because it doesn’t matter if any of it contradicts itself, Geoff Johns can have his cake and eat it too and then throw out the rest of the bakery, and fuck you for being a smug little smartass punk who thinks he could ever possibly know better than Geoff Johns about literally anything.

[storyplease]

So I finally watched “Rise of the Guardians” and I have some thoughts about the major themes in the film...

Anyway, so I know this is a kid’s film or whatever, and I know that this probably WAYYY too in the weeds as far as thoughts are concerned, but what is Tumblr even good for if you can’t rant about fictional characters in peace?

Potential spoilers below cut...

Anyway, so the movie centers around mythical character such as the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus, etc, who can be argued are literally and figuratively “unbelievable” beings that require the faith of children (not necessarily the actual knowledge of their existence) to exist.  In many ways, they play by the same rules as the American Gods in Neil Gaiman’s story of the same name. But I digress (a theme in my writing, yes?).  One of the biggest themes in the movie is the idea of a “center”- each mythical entity has a an unusual “spark” of something that makes them worthy (from what appears to be upon their death) of becoming more than human. 

So for example:

Santa Claus: Miracles/Wonder

Easter Bunny: Rebirth/Hope

Tooth Fairy: Remembrance/Connection

Sandy: Joy/Peace

It is established that all of the characters used to be mortal at some point or other, so the universe appears to have a deus ex machina (the Man in the Moon, who appears to run everything, but more on that later) who “decides” when someone is to be bestowed with powers...but who is also rendered intangible to the human beings they depend on for their power to grow until they prove themselves (mostly to children, because children tend to easily trust and believe in all manner of thing without a shred of evidence, and would therefore be much easier to convince to pledge their loyalty to)...somehow.

One of the big parts of Jack Frost’s story arc is that he doesn’t have any memories of who he was before he awoke with his abilities.  He doesn’t remember his family or have the ability to have connections with mortals directly, and yet some people do mention his name without seeing him, so it appears that he is able to scrape power here and there.  It is also worth mentioning that all of the Guardians appear to be aware of and can interact with Jack, but that they have chosen not to for over 400 years other than a few times where Jack has tried to playfully interact only to be shut down or retaliated against.

When he finally finds his memories, everyone acts really surprised, but it seems odd that this would never have come up before, especially since the Tooth Fairy appears to swoon/love his teeth and might have brought it up (but we shall forgive her a bit as she appears to be absurdly busy running the tooth empire to end all tooth empires). 

But the most important part of this revelation is that a lot of Jack Frost’s negative character traits are specifically because he is lonely and has nobody else.  He spends his life interacting with a world that cannot see or touch him.  Therefore, his center (fun/mischief) becomes twisted and he causes trouble.

When he realizes his past and is able to connect with both mortal children and the other Guardians, his character blossoms! He becomes confident, protective, fun and wisecracking but without malice or bitterness. 

He comes into his own, and his power increases.

Which brings me to...you guessed it...the main antagonist of the film.

The character of Pitch is obviously the bad guy.  He’s dark, scary, looks kinda like he’s never brushed his teeth unless the toothpaste was made of coal, and is in general menacing and terrifying.  He harms the characters, terrifies the children and generally drives the plot for his own selfish ends.  After all, he’s known as the “boogeyman.”

His main traits appear to be a penchant for darkness (creating it and hiding in shadow) and causing fear.  His lair appears to be in a hole underground that is situated under an old and rotting bed frame.  Now there’s a lot of this that could just be taken on the nose.  After all, there’s a reason that “there’s a monster under your bed” is a semi-universal kid’s fear.

There’s even a terrible pun about Pitch having a great time in the “Dark Ages.”

The thing is, darkness can mean a lot of things.  And so can fear.

Let me back up a bit so I can explain what I’m getting at:

Awhile back, I read an amazingly insightful book called The Gift Of Fear.  It has a lot of very good advice on recognizing and using the fear response to protect your safety and your life.  Fear is often overlooked as a silly, primal thing, especially when we talk about children and things that go bump in the night, but there is a very good reasons why humans feel a variety of kinds of fear, and many of them are actively useful in preserving your life.

Darkness is essential to life.  The day ends, and night falls.  Shadows follow our moves and do as we do.  Even the human eye cannot bear blue light at night, and artificial lighting has been touted as all kinds of unhealthy by experts and doctors alike. 

None of these things are actively evil or wrong, to be sure.

But Pitch has something in common with Jack Frost.  And what is that?  Why, he is ignored. Nobody believes in him (which I find silly to be honest because I know plenty of kids afraid of the dark or who have nightmares and such).

The whole thing- the theatrical posing, the big scary Villain speech...in the end, Pitch was doing just the same thing that Jack did when he antagonized the Easter Bunny by ruining the egg hunt with frost.  He wanted people to pay attention to him, to like him.  And because nobody would do so, he decided that negative attention was still attention.

This is backed up by the fact that none of the children are harmed by his nightmare horses when faced with him (they turn into golden sand when touched).  They even say, even with thousands of scary black nightmares bearing down on them, that they aren’t scared of him and will protect the Guardians.

I feel like Pitch is overlooking a couple of things when he is trying his ridiculous plan to rule the world in darkness. 

First off, he’s backed himself into a corner- he plays the bad guy, of course he isn’t going to win against the heroes.  And to some extent, it’s pretty obvious that he knows it.  For all his posturing, he often pulls his punches, and even when he destroys Jack’s staff, he still throws it down on the ground and does not take it with him because he is trying to get Jack to see beyond his limitations just as he himself has learned to harness the sand with his darkness.

Secondly, just because kids love Santa and Easter and gifts from tooth fairies, not all kids have perfect upper-middle-class lives like the children in this movie.  There is a reason why there are a surprisingly large number of hand-drawn comics that deal with a child making friends with the monster under the bed or even being protected by said monster against an abusive parent or family member.

My feeling here is that Pitch hasn’t truly realized what his purpose is, and that he is actually being held back because....

Pitch’s center is fear.

There’s a reason he’s portrayed as having a lair under a shabby, rotting bed, in darkness.  When he was human, his life must have been hellish.  I can imagine him hiding in the shadows of his room, crouched under the bed in darkness because the fear of what his father or mother might do to him was eating him alive.  In fact, he may have died in that manner, terrified out of his mind and knowing only the darkness to hide him.  If this is what the Man in the Moon deemed worthy to change him into his post-mortal form, then is any of this truly his fault?

I might say...no.  Being awoken from a hellish world where you are in constant fear to a world in which fear and darkness are the only thing that strengthen you would be its own sort of hell.

We don’t get to see Pitch’s past, but ostensibly the Tooth Fairy has it and knows of it.  A tooth is knocked out at the end, so ostensibly it will go in Pitch’s box, or the box of whoever he was when he was mortal.

But furthermore, what if Pitch were able to change the way he thinks about his power and his strength?  What if he uses his darkness to conceal children who are in danger, or helps those who are imprisoned to escape? What if he guides children away from danger by using their fear to guide them?  What I am saying is that “playing the villain” seems to be the most obvious thing when you’ve only ever known an existence in which you are hated and told you are wrong and bad.

However, if we really sit down and think about it, colored eggs and toys are no more “good” than shielding the weak and vulnerable with your shadows and putting the fear of...something that bumps in the night in the hearts of predators while guiding the fear of the young from forks in outlets and jumps from high places.

In the end, locking a being like Pitch away is a foolish idea because in his loneliness in the darkness, his fear and terror will only grow, driving him into madness in his isolation.  Pitch not only has to learn to conquer his own fears (fear or being rejected, fear of being hated) but to also realize that he can be more than a flat villainous character if he wishes to thrive.

He just has to get past the fear.

[shellheadtmark2]

@auntlarb if I was to start reading comics for 616 Tony, which comic would you recommend to start with? like I have zero idea how comics work or where to even begin

honestly, and this isn’t really a good answer, but it’s the honest one, it depends on what you want to know.  because otherwise the answer is everything.  every single scrap you can because...well, to be absolutely real with you, shit from one panel from one comic fifty years ago will be referenced in a comic now and the only footnote you get in explanation is something like “AS SEEN IN INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #5! - EDITOR” when invincible iron man #5 was published in 1963.

i’m also going to really preface this in general for anyone reading this and also be incredibly real and say if anyone that wants to start reading iron man comics and goes in expecting anything at all like mcu tony - you’re gonna be disappointed.  mcu tony is as different to 616 tony as ultimates tony is to both of them, which is to say...they’re different characters.  or, rather, very different takes on the same character.  the mcu is something like what if 616 and ultimates had a baby and that baby grew up to marry thanos.  616 tony is less cinnamon roll too good for this world and is literally charred cinnamon roll, crunchy, been through hell and back, throw him in the trash.  i love him a lot tho.

alright, that’s my expect something completely different disclaimer.

the problem with reading guides in general is that they don’t...you don’t get the full picture.  with comics you have to jump around, read an issue here and there of a title you wouldn’t normally do so with (as i wait patiently for wednesday so i can read loki #2 and find out why tony’s wearing armor on the cover he logically shouldn’t - assuming that’s even addressed).  there’...honestly i’d argue there’s no perfect place to jump in, you just pick a spot and start reading, and if you get to the end of an issue and it says “contined in [some other comic title and number]” you hunt that down and read it, and then bounce back to what you were reading.  so you get the full picture.  you read  a lot of comics - and i mean a lot - digging out every scrap of one storyline.  

which is a lot of words to say pick a spot and just dive in.  but it’s true.  i can, however, offer suggestions for runs that i personally enjoy and think give good groundwork for how 616 tony feels different from mcu tony, and eases you into it being less jarring because of that difference.  

iron man: extremis director’s cut (2005) will never not be on my recommended list.  it shows you how extremis works in 616 and why tony would do that to himself.  it’s also one of those comics that gives you a little bit of a sense of how 616 tony’s brain works.  be warned tho, it’s...it’s dark.  and gory.  i can tell you right now most of the iron man comics on this list are going to be both of those things, because that’s just how iron man rolls.  there’s no happy endings for tony, y’all.  this is one comic i reference a lot.

invincible iron man (2008) is another favorite.  it’s a little bit director of shield, a little bit of a mandarin face off story, a little bit of yanking tony out of the armor, a little bit of getting involved in asgard’s bullshit, a little bit of a detective story.  this is the run with the brain thing.  also gory.  also, at times, dark.  it does not shy from the body horror of what tony does to himself.  but it’s a solid look at tony’s world, i think, from tony’s point of view.  also i can verify you can read this one without having read others because @gwinnetts did it for reasons and furthermore and didn’t have any trouble.

invincible iron man (1998) is another good run, though it’s one that...goes for a long while.  the mandarin shows up, you see bits and pieces of tony’s ridiculously bad love life, he’s secdef for a while, there’s all kinds of weird horror shows going on, it’s dark, it’s gritty, it’s the golden age of iron man comics, in my opinion.  also a good place to start because it’s post heroes-reborn so everything’s new and shiny and you can follow along right through it.

avengers (2013) requires some prerequisite reading and some intermittent reading of other stuff (AXIS, superior iron man, new avengers, infinity) to get the full picture by the end, but good lord it’s a beautiful avengers run.

because that’s the thing.  you can’t just read iron man comics, you gotta start dipping in all over the place to understand what’s going on.  

new avengers & young avengers (2005) is okay in the set up to civil war.  you’ll get to see characters like luke cage and spider-man, stature and patriot, as well as jessica drew and wolverine, and it starts laying that foundation.

civil war is super! super! important to tony, even if he doesn’t remember it anymore firsthand.  and there are so many tie ins to civil war like...you could spend forever just here.  on top of the seven issue run, i also highly recommend fallen son, the confession, and what if? civil war for maximum tony stark manpain.  because civil war fucking wrecks me.  it’s been fifteen goddamn years almost and it still fucking wrecks me.

demon in a bottle, because tony being a recovering alcoholic is such a huge part of his character development, and demon in a bottle is crucial to that.  to add on to that, in invincible iron man runs in the early 80s help fill in the blanks from this nicely.

iron man legacy is incomplete, but it’s so so good.  so good.  it gives you a taste of homeless tony in a modern sense, as well as how inventive his brain is when he’s armorless.  well worth the read and it won’t even take that long.

the armor wars (both of them) are another set that definitely deserve a skim through, because it shows just how out of hand shit gets sometimes, and how far tony will go to get his shit back.

iron man: viva las vegas is also incomplete, which is a goddamn shame, but it’s another quick read that gives you and idea of tony doing tony things.  it was also a great little plot, killed before its time, and the art was, imo, solid, in the same style as iron man: extremis.

iron man: fatal frontier is hooo boy.  it’s sure a thing that happened.  think mining boomtown.  on the moon.  with tony as the sheriff.  who’s also suffering from a metal poisoning that’s making him megalomaniacal because “tony knows best”.  it’s good.  if anyone doesn’t agree, we can meet in the pit, i love fatal frontier.  i have lots of feelings about fatal frontier.

fantastic four/iron man: big in japan is great to lighten things up again.  kinda gory but in a cutesy...way?  it’s hard to explain, this comic is just wild as fuck.  also hilarious.

captain america: man out of time is probably a weird choice outwardly to put here, but it’s about the avengers finding cap from cap’s perspective, and how badly tony was mancrushing on him.  the start of the unnecessary touching.  tony wiggling in excitement to take steve rogers out.  tony’s dual identity.  it’s all here, and from steve rogers’s perspective.

anyway this thing is...really long, and this is a good start.  it gives (i personally think, anyone else is welcome to disagree / make suggestions) a good comparison for just how different 616 tony is.  you’ll both hurt for him even more?  and feel pretty unsympathetic to some of his bullshit by the end of it.  but what you will see is a lot of nuance that’s missed just because the mcu couldn’t develop these kinds of layers in the time it had.  tony’s complicated, and that’s putting it...extremely mildly.  he’s so so good, but he’s willing to throw himself on the pyre and nail himself on the cross and it fucks him each and every time he does it.

[dumbledoom]

The Umbrella Academy

What a good show!!!!! Let me tell ya, I was sleepin on this show and I have no clue why!?!?! Take a seat, grab a snack, get comfortable cuz I'm about to rant!!!

Ok for starters, as a disclaimer, I knew nothing about the comic books or characters or anything before watching this show. But damn, going into it blind is probably just as much fun as if you were already an established fan.

This show is so so entertaining and well done. It sort of reminds me of Heroes, way back in the day when that show was on (Sylar was my jam gah-damn). I feel like The Umbrella Academy captures that same kind of audience kind of, but it's so independent and unique on it's own that it's definitely separated from Heroes.

This show speaks to me on so many levels. Emotionally stunted family/siblings dealing with the abusive/neglectful childhood they were raised in. Superheroes (also my main jam). Action, love of all kinds, personal development for each character, humor, seriously this show is just so well rounded.

I didn't know what to expect at every turn, I was kept constantly trying to guess what was going to happen next and there were several options to choose from for them to go. Each character brings something different to the table and it's just so fun to see them grow and where they go with the story.

The actors! Good-god-almighty! They did such a great job of picking these people, not to mention the diversity. Yay! I'm so for it, I love it!

Allison is so gorgeous (even tho her hair looking like ramen noodles had me so distracted for most of the season, I got over it...kinda) She is beautiful and her power, "I heard a rumor", like damn dude you could get away with anything with that! No wonder her character chose to be an actress in the show. She is smart and sassy and confident and I'm here for it. I feel bad for her with her backstory with her daughter, but like if I were a mom with her power, I'd probably have done the same thing (cuz ya girl ain't got an ounce of patience for bullshit)

Vanya (super cool name, love it) isn't my favorite character but she is still pretty cool. Its kind of hard for me to look at Ellen Page and not think of Juno. She's never been my favorite actress, but she does a good job with this character, being so closed off and neglected at the beginning and then completely transforming. Homegirl had is super rough as a child, I feel for her, being left out...that shit kills. She is soooo tiny in stature compared to everyone else in the show, it kept throwing me off a bit, but like that's not her fault. If anything it adds to her character. I hate how easy it was for her to be influenced by what others said. (Btw, fuck you Leonard, you're a dick bro, I ain't even gonna give you your own paragraph of opinion, cuz you manipulative fuck, I don't like you!)

Now for the boys!

Good lord they did my boy, Tom Hopper, dirty with the outrageous bodysuit they put on him for Luther! Like he is so naturally built and pretty to look at and they had to go and ruin my visual pleasure of him with that gnarly bodysuit! I spent the better part of like the first 4 or 5 episodes trying to think of how they did this effect before I thought of them making him wear just a big foam prosthetic. (Insert gif of Chris Evans' "I don't wike it" here) Luther as a character I feel needs a bit more development, they don't really define his power super clearly except for his build telling you its strength. They don't showcase it very well and it makes me sad. Also!! Why would you put him on the moon for 4 years! Damn you, Reginald!! Even without the in-depth background development, I love him as a character cuz he definitely tries to be the golden boy, protector, older brother even though they're all the same age. I love him. The dance scene between him and Allison completed me!

Diego is awesome! I love him. I wasn't too sure of him at the start, he looked super suspicious and guilty at the start but I really learned to love him. Not to mention he is hot af, like damn boi! I love how much of a hot-head he is and his power with the knives is dope. His relationship with Klaus is so funny as it develops and I just really enjoy it. He is stubborn as fuck tho! Seeing some of his backstory and how close he is with mom is so sweet, cuz he plays the tough guy when he is such a mama's boy at heart.

Five is such a goober! Putting an old dude in a kid's body, he is so dry and serious and it's just so funny cuz he is the most mature out of all of them! He's such a grump too, but I would be too if I had gone through what he did. His power is super cool and I would love to have it! Imagine all the money you'd save on gas and plane tickets just being able to jump anywhere like that!! GOALS! The fact he can time travel with it is just a bonus! He really is the smartest of the bunch (tho Allison is on his heels, as runner up) I'm my opinion. The fact that he is in love with a mannequin is such a quirky and fun part of the show! It's like they were like, "sure, give the youngest character a love interest, but make sure she isn't real", genius! I don't know what these writers were thinking, but it fucking works.

Klaus is my favorite character of the entire damn show! This boy is so fucking funny, I can't get over it. He has these one-liners or quips throughout the show that just get me. His style and look is so attractive too, especially when he isn't really my usual type, but I was really feeling him. I love that they portray the addiction struggle. I think he, as an actor, really nails that part of the performance and brings a lot of heart to it. He really makes you fall in love with the black sheep of the family, the screw up. I really enjoy his relationship with Ben throughout the show and the fact that it's so secluded to the two of them. I really like that they don't play on his sexuality as what defines him, it's a part of him that is important, but it's not his sole focus and I really appreciate that. I wish they would elaborate more on his relationship with Dave, but maybe that'll be explained more in future seasons? The fact that he communicates with dead people for his power is super cool. The old Russian lady just yapping in the background of that one episode was so funny, but like I can see why he resorts to drugs for relief. Poor baby can't get any peace and quiet, not even in the tub! The scene of him dancing around in his towel is great, it kills me! Klaus really is just my favorite of the whole show, he really steals it for me and I just love him so much!!!

I really want Ben to be expanded as a character. I like the actor they chose for him, I like his sense of humor and the fact that he basically acts as Klaus' conscience. I want more of him, cuz I think he is a cool character and I want more backstory.

Freaking Hazel and Cha-Cha! What a duo!? Mary J. Blige is legendary, so beautiful and suave. Having her paired with a guy like Hazel is just so fun. He is such a sweetheart, falling for the donut lady who is like way older than him!? I would've never called that and it's a bit weird of a relationship, but I respect it! You love who you love! Anyways, Hazel and Cha-Cha are fun to watch and the fact that they struggle so much with trying to kill Five is just hilarious to me.

Altogether the show is just so much fun to watch. The relationship between the characters and the development is choice and I love it. I relate to each character and what they go through in different aspects and it triggers me and my memories, but I don't really mind to be honest, the show is worth it. The main plot of stop the apocalypse is overdone, but if you can look past that (like I do) then the show is so enjoyable. I definitely recommend it to anyone who needs a new binge (seeing as I watched it in an afternoon, don't judge me, I did 5 hours of microeconomics homework before that).

So yeah...that's all I gotta say about that.

[roseisread]

My Year in Movies: Favorite Non-2018 Feature Films (Part 2)

Continuing the countdown of my favorite movies I saw for the first time in 2018 that were released in previous years... for part 1 of this list, click here.

39. Tokyo Drifter (1966, directed by Seijun Suzuki, country of origin: Japan)

Seijun Suzuki pulls together his favorite tropes from the Western, film noir, and Yakuza genres and throws a post modern, new wave sensibility on top complete with lots of neon and surrealism. The end result is one of the most stylistically bold movies I’ve ever encountered, and its influence extends to modern auteurs like Quentin Tarantino, Jim Jarmusch, and Nicolas Winding Refn. Tokyo Drifter (which has nothing to do with the Fast & Furious franchise as far as I know) follows a gangster on the run, but the plot really is secondary to the overall feel of the movie. Really fun and one I can imagine revisiting a lot just for its aesthetic choices and action set pieces. Rent it on Amazon Prime; in the meantime, here’s a pretty decent fan-made trailer.

38. Born to Kill (1947, directed by Robert Wise, country of origin: US)

Hollywood’s original bad boy Lawrence Tierney stars in this nasty little noir that fully lives up to its violent title. Sam Wilde (Tierney) is a gorgeous, amoral social climber who doesn’t let a little trifle like murder stand in the way of getting what he wants. Helen Brent (Claire Trevor) finds herself strangely drawn to him, even as she learns of his criminal leanings. There’s a particularly lustful scene between Sam and Helen that could be a direct influence on Natural Born Killers, actually. The fact that this picture was directed by Robert Wise, best known for his work on The Sound of Music and West Side Story, makes it all the more interesting--this pulpy film doesn’t have any musical numbers but it certainly is well-crafted and choreographed. If you love a good antihero, you owe it to yourself to watch this. Available for rent on Amazon, YouTube, and Vudu. 

37. Throw Momma From the Train (1987, directed by Danny DeVito, country of origin: US)

This comic riff on Strangers on a Train starts off with murder on its mind, but there’s a surprising sweetness lying just below the surface. I’m sure most people have already seen this film but in case you haven’t, you’re in for a hilarious and endearing story that showcases peak Billy Crystal and Danny DeVito. Anne Ramsey plays the titular “Momma,” and she was nominated for both the Oscars and the Golden Globes in this supporting role. There are lots of ways to watch this movie for free, including Amazon Prime, YouTube, Vudu, GooglePlay, and Showtime. 

36. Johnny Guitar (1954, directed by Nicholas Ray, country of origin: US)

The title refers to Sterling Hayden’s outlaw cowboy, but the real star of the show is Joan Crawford as Vienna: a saloon owning, jeans wearing, piano playing woman who takes on the whole town in a showdown. Portrayals of women in Westerns vary, but few emanate such power and self-assuredness as Vienna. 

Another woman, tellingly named Emma Small (played by Mercedes McCambridge), has set her sights on getting rid of Vienna and her establishment once and for all, and she will stop at no amount of violence or trickery to make it happen. So basically this is Mean Girls but in the Wild West. Offscreen, Joan Crawford was hooking up with director Nicholas Ray; and she’d previously been romantically involved with McCambridge’s now-husband. Both ladies also consumed a fair amount of booze while filming. This led to their rivalry bleeding into real life, and perhaps added to the tension we see on screen between the two. 

This movie didn’t have the warmest reception when it premiered stateside (Bosley Crowther on Crawford’s Vienna: “...as sexless as the lions on the public library steps and as sharp and romantically forbidding as a package of unwrapped razor blades.”) But European audiences devoured it, and it became beloved of people like Francois Truffaut who saw it as a major influence. You can watch it now on Hulu or rent from a number of streaming platforms. 

35. Sonatine (1993, directed by Takeshi “Beat” Kitano, country of origin: Japan)

Takeshi Kitano wrote, directed, and starred in this cult take on Yakuza films. In it, he plays Murakawa, a gangster who dispatches (often in creatively cruel ways) anyone his bosses happen to dislike. But he’s starting to grow weary of this way of life when he gets sent on a new assignment that has him mediating a dispute with a rival gang in Okinawa. He suspects that he may be the real target, but goes along with the order. While hiding out between confrontations, Murakawa and a batch of young recruits find ways to pass the time--shooting cans off each other’s heads, playing a roulette version of rock paper scissors, pretending to be sumo wrestlers, and more. 

There’s not a lot of dialogue here, and Kitano plays his character with a stoicism that Buster Keaton and Alain Delon no doubt influenced. But the poetry and emotion are all in the action (and inaction) on screen. Here is a man whose main accomplishments are surviving bloody shootouts and racking up the body count for his employer--no wonder he hallucinates about self-destruction and walks the beach in a daze. There’s actually a good bit of comedy here too, as the movie isn’t afraid to veer into cartoonish moments and satirize the very genre it portrays. I also have to specifically call out the action scenes, especially one near the end--completely memorable, unique, and gorgeously shot. Watch this via rental on Amazon, YouTube, and GooglePlay--especially if you’re a fan of movies like Drive, Kill Bill, or Le Samourai. 

34. Metropolitan (1990, directed by Whit Stillman, country of origin: US)

My first encounter with Whit Stillman came via 2016′s Love and Friendship, his adaptation of a Jane Austen story. When his debut film appeared on Filmstruck, I realized what a perfect fit Austen and Stillman really are. This movie follows a group of (mostly) wealthy teenagers in Manhattan, who attend debutante balls and gather at each other’s homes for long pretentious conversations and romantic sparring. If Austen were alive today, no doubt she would have written a novel in the same setting, filled with the same biting wit (no pun intended) that Stillman displays. If you like your movies with a lot of action and plot twists, this may not be your cup of tea; but if you enjoy the works of, say, Woody Allen/Noah Baumbach/Wes Anderson then you will definitely find this a subtle delight. No big names amongst the cast; and many of them only did one or two other projects after this, but I think that adds to the feeling of naïveté and naturalism. Random observation, but when I watched this movie I found connections between a number of its characters and the cast of The Breakfast Club--see if you agree. Right now you can rent this via iTunes, and since it takes place around Christmas and New Year’s, this would be a great time to watch. 

33. Radio Days (1987, directed by Woody Allen, country of origin: US)

This might be the sweetest, least cynical movie in Woody Allen’s filmography. It’s a love letter to the 1930s and 40s, when families would gather around the radio (rather than the TV) for music, serials, and news of the outside world. Seth Green plays the Woody stand-in as a child, Mia Farrow plays an aspiring radio actress, Larry David pops up as the Communist next door neighbor--it’s a real hoot. The music (from the likes of Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, and Glenn Miller) is gorgeous and it’s fun to see old New York recreated for this film. Suitable for all ages and utterly delightful, you can watch it on Hulu with a subscription or rent it on Vudu for $2.99. 

32. Pickup (1951, directed by Hugo Haas, country of origin: US)

I caught up with this low-budget B-movie noir during Noir City Chicago, and fell head over heels for it. The director plays the lead character, a lovable but lonely railroad worker named Hunky (he does not live up to this name in appearance). When he encounters the gorgeous and sassy Betty (Beverly Michaels) at a carnival, he can’t believe a guy like him could hold the romantic interest of such a hottie. As luck would have it, though, she’s more attracted to his life savings than to him. What a golddigger. What sets this movie apart is the addition of a little plot twist: Hunky loses his hearing in an accident, which is just fine by the conniving Betty who can now scheme and talk trash around her husband. But when Hunky’s hearing unexpectedly returns, he doesn’t tell anyone and discovers that his beloved wifey is plotting his demise. Bonus: There’s a pretty adorable puppy in the mix. This isn’t available on DVD, sadly, but someone has uploaded it to YouTube and if you have 77 minutes to kill, I recommend checking it out.

31. Ghost (1990, directed by Jerry Zucker, country of origin: US)

Look, I love Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg and Patrick Swayze just as much as the next person, but for some reason I had always assumed that Ghost was this really cheesy paranormal romance. Wrong! It’s a charming murder mystery with some legit scary moments a lot of comedy, and, yes, some romance too. So if you have somehow missed this gem, you can catch up with it for 99 cents right now on Amazon or rent it for a Few Dollars More on other streaming sites.

30. One False Move (1992, directed by Carl Franklin, country of origin: US)

In part one of this list, I mentioned watching multiple Bill Paxton movies in 2018. This one features Paxton as a small town sheriff with illusions of grandeur--instead of settling small time domestic disputes, he’d love to one day solve murders and thwart serial killers and arrest drug kingpins in the big city. He gets his chance to do something bigger when a car full of murderous fugitives rolls into town. The LA detectives on the case don’t quite know what to make of Paxton; but he views them as heroes. When he gets his chance to show them what he’s made of, he doesn’t flinch. 

Billy Bob Thornton co-wrote the screenplay and co-stars in the film, another connection between this and the other Paxton entry on my list (A Simple Plan). Here, he’s a vile and brutal sociopath (a role he’d go on to play in the TV adaptation of Fargo), with a girlfriend named Fantasia (Cynda Williams) that might be having second thoughts about their relationship. Director Carl Franklin is perhaps better known for the Denzel Washington neo noir Devil in a Blue Dress; and Franklin himself introduced a double feature of these two films at Noir City Chicago. He’s a brilliant, economical director with a deep well of classical film knowledge and a knack for capturing defining character traits in the space of a few frames. Rent this movie on Amazon, Vudu, or YouTube and prepare for a gritty, moving ride. 

29. Peeping Tom (1960, directed by Michael Powell, country of origin: England)

I caught up with this out of print masterpiece (purchased at my local library sale for 50 cents on Criterion DVD!) during my October horror viewing, and immediately wanted it to find a wider audience. Reviled upon its initial release, it follows a talented but troubled young filmmaker whose obsession involves recording the final moments of his murder victims’ lives, as they realize their fate. Pretty twisted, I know. The exploration of voyeurism and the relationship between the camera, its subjects, and an audience really make this a fascinating watch, both from a technical perspective and as a critique of moviemaking and consumption. One can’t help but see the influence this movie has had on horror filmmakers from Wes Craven to John Carpenter, particularly in the way it forces us to identify with the psychologically damaged killer instead of centering the narrative on his victims. Massively underrated, and deserving of your attention if you consider yourself a fan of horror movies. Watch it via rental on a number of streaming platforms. 

That concludes part 2 of the list! Stay tuned for the next segment, coming soon! 

[entamewitchlulu]

Homura’s Flash Reviews [Spring 2018]

It’s the end of another animu season, so it’s time to give some flash reviews for the stuff I ended up finishing this season!

Under the cut for the length + all the gifs lol

Comic Girls

After having storyboard after storyboard rejected, young aspiring manga artist Kaoruko moves to a dorm specifically for young mangaka, where she makes new friends, has fun adventures, and learns a lot about herself and her craft.

I liked this show way more than I expected to; it’s a very moeblob show and especially in the first couple of episodes there’s a lot of anime bullshit.  It IS a gag anime at the start and tends to default to a lot of the same tropes.  Despite this, I found it ridiculously hilarious, and I could relate to a lot of the #ArtistProblems and other things the girls dealt with regularly.  Not to mention, the characters were generally just really fun, cute personalities.  Despite some frustrations with some general character arcs feeling a bit stagnant, there were actually multiple places where I physically cried because despite the gag manga start, it gets pretty emotional later on regarding things like anxiety, artist’s block, and the feeling of stagnation, which was super relatable.  Also....Kaoruko is absolutely a tiny lesbian and I love my tiny lesbian daughter.  Actually I’m pretty sure they’re all lesbians, except for Rukki who is probably bisexual.

overall: 7/10

Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card

Following the events of the original Cardcaptors, Sakura wakes up one morning to find that all of her Sakura Cards have turned clear.  Not only that, but there are more, strange new spirits appearing, and she’s been granted a brand new key from a dream.

Okay so....I have made mention of this one from a few other flash reviews since the first cour took place during last season.  And...my opinion has honestly worsened.  This was 22 episodes of obnoxiously boring fluff and little else. Don’t get me wrong: I love fluff. But I watch specific things for fluff. I don’t watch magical girl shows for 95% fluff, I watch them for sparkly, magical girl bullshit, cute costumes, fun magical experiences, and maybe just a little bit of worldbuilding.  Clear Card gave me next to nothing on all fronts.  When it wasn’t trying to be Cardcaptor Sakura: The Cooking Show, it was dragging its feet with 15 minutes of pointless chatter that did nothing to further characters or relationships, leaving them the exact same static characters they were in the original series.  Syaoran’s greatest draw was nearly completely erased once he became just a sedentary background love interest who did little. At least as a rival he pushed Sakura, but here, he just enabled the boring writing that did nothing to push the envelope.  The formula is nearly exactly the same as the last two series and the arc even mentions it.  Characters are unnecessarily cryptic, hiding things from each other, which only drags the story down.  The main plot is barely sprinkled in, magic stuff usually only happens for about 2 minutes towards the end of the mind-bogglingly slow fluff episodes, and the major plot??  Only appears for about five minutes in the final episode, addresses none of the questions we had and only reveals things we had already figured out fifteen episodes ago, gives no conclusion to any of it, and COMPLETELY ERASES THE ONLY CLIMATIC, STORY-FURTHERING SCENE BY USING TIME MAGIC.

And that’s...it, apparently.  I see no indication of a second season.  I assume the manga is still ongoing, but even if it is, this was an absolutely horrendous ending that did nothing to satisfyingly tie up ANY loose ends, further the world or the characters, or really do anything to add to the previous series.  Even the costumes were few and far between and the cards were almost all the same as the last set.  There was no creativity and nothing added here for the fans.  That brings me to my ultimate complaint: who was this show even for?! It can’t still be for kids, because new young fans of the original demographic’s age group would not have any clue what was happening with these characters, and it’s just lore-based enough to confuse any new viewers.  And it can’t be for the original fan group, who are all much older now and want something with just a little more substance. I’m not asking for a gritty cardcaptors show at all. Just something that respects us as adult viewers and gives us a little more to grab onto.  And that was way longer than any flash review has any right to be, so I will cut myself off there.

overall: 4/10

Lostorage conflated WIXOSS

Though they believed it was finally over, former LRIG and Selector Kiyoi knows that the Selector battles will come again, and this time, they will destroy everything--and she is determined to bring the dark loop of suffering to a close once and for all by bringing together all of the greatest Selectors from every generation to take on the new threat.

Boasting the largest cast of any of the previous WIXOSS series and continuing both the story of Lostorage and the first two Selector series, this is absolutely the most ambitious take on the WIXOSS universe thus far: and it does fantastically with it.  There was not a single moment where I was bored; even during slower flashback and exposition parts, I was hooked.  This was one of the best ways to expand and complete the universe, as the ending here finally does feel like a decisive end to the anime franchise (though, so did the end of the Selector anime, so who knows lol).

As always, WIXOSS has some of the most fantastic character designs, relationships, dynamics, and animation among other anime, making it truly stand out.  The card game is more window dressing than actual substance, but that doesn’t matter, because the power of the relationships and the messages that this story is telling are far more powerful and attention grabbing.  The decision to make Kiyoi the protagonist of this series, while also bringing back previous protagonists Ruko and Suzuko, was an incredible decision and really made for a fantastic story.

overall: 9/10

Golden Kamuy

After being discharged from the army after the Japanese-Russo war, Sugimoto is left with the dying wish of his comrade: to make enough money to support his fallen comrade’s wife and son and pay for their medical expenses.  He stumbles across an opportunity when an escaped convict tells him of a hidden trove of Ainu gold that can only be found by collecting the information tattooed onto the bodies of a group of escaped prisoners. With the help of an Ainu girl named Asirpa, whose tribe the gold was stolen from, Sugimoto takes on the mission to track down the prisoners and find the gold.

This show is absolutely fucking incredible.  I don’t think I can even give it proper words.  Like what a goddamn great season for anime this was??  Not only is the show clearly heavily researched, giving us insight into a part of Japanese history and Ainu culture that is rarely if ever discussed in Japanese culture, the story and characters are all so well done.  The animation can be wonky in places, but the expressions, the character banter, and god the soundtrack are all mind-blowingly good.  Unlike Clear Card, when this show decided it wanted to be a cooking show, I was completely on board, because I was learning something new about Ainu culture and also getting to see our heroes be adorkable and hilarious together.  The characters are absolutely where this show shines, and even though it’s a bit bloated at first, characters quickly become recognizeable and easily separated.  The relationship between Sugimoto and Asirpa, especially, is one of the most wholesome and fun friendships I’ve ever witnessed (I’m hoping, tho, that it stays platonic despite some jokes to the contrary lol).  This was only season 1, and season 2 will air in October, and you can bet I will be waiting at the edge of my seat for more of this incredible show.

overall: 9/10

Hinamatsuri

After a strange girl in a metal cocoon drops out of the sky and onto his head, yakuza Nitta finds himself the reluctant father of a needy young girl with psychic powers.  Shenanigans ensue around their strange new family and the dysfunctional adults and children that surround them.

This show was so much fucking better than it had any right to be; from the initial plot summary I was worried it was going to be awful, creepy-ish moe bullshit...but it was NOT.  This was a gag anime of the highest caliber.  The pacing was amazing, the characters were to a one endearing, the animation was BEAUTIFUL, and god...the punchlines...everything was so fucking funny the whole time.

You’ve got pretty much everything here: you’ve got the obnoxiously needy Hina, who is monotone in everything she does, you’ve got the Worst/Best Dad Nitta, you’ve got poor can’t-say-no-to-favors Hitomi, and the Most Pure and Wholesome Anzu.  There’s something to love in every character and every scene, and it’s ridiculous just how amazing this show is.  I can’t put it into words, please just watch it.  Where my other top shows of the season took awhile to grow on me, this one was hitting home runs from episode 1.  Do yourself a favor and watch it.

overall: 9/10

Megalo Box

In a world where boxing is performed with powerful mechanical rigs known as Gear, a nameless boxer known only as Junk Dog is tired of being forced to throw fights in an illegal underground boxing ring to pad the pockets of his gambling organization.  When he crosses paths with the current champion of Megalo Box, he and his crew take a risky gamble to get him into the world’s first international Megalo Box competition so that he can fight the champion again, reinventing himself as Gearless Joe as he steps into the ring without any Gear.

This show took a while to really get onto my Awesome List, mostly because the aesthetic that it’s throwing back to was never really my thing in the first place.  I’m generally not a huge fan of the muted color palettes, the punkish music, or just the idea of boxing in general (a lack of significant female characters also always tends to put me off).  Despite this, however, the show ended up being stunning.  By halfway through, I was incredibly hooked on the high this show wanted me to ride, by the character arcs that were playing off each other, and I was even coming around to the music.  Boxing may not be my thing, but the character story that was told here was an incredible one, and definitely deserves its place among the Best Anime of 2018, which if it doesn’t win something come that time, I’ll be floored and disappointed with everyone.

overall: 9/10

Overall this was an incredibly strong season: I dropped a few things of course, but what I continued were almost all 9/10s.  I’m super pleased with the spring season and I’m looking forward to seeing what’s coming out for summer.

[atthevogue]

“Tony de Peltrie” (1985)

The basics: Wikipedia

Opened: A landmark piece of computer animation, the Canadian short was part of the 19th Annual Tournee of Animation anthology that showed at the Vogue Theater in March and April of 1986.

Also on the bill: At least one Saturday in April, it was programmed in the 9:00 slot after Chris Marker’s Akira Kurosawa documentary A.K. and Woody Allen’s Sleeper, and before a midnight showing of Night of the Living Dead, which sounds to me like a very good eight-hour day at the movies. Otherwise, you could have had a less perfect day seeing it play after Haskell Wexler’s forgotten Nicaragua war movie Latino and the equally forgotten Gene Hackman/Ann-Margaret romantic drama Twice in a Lifetime.

What did the paper say? ★★★1/2 from the Courier-Journal film critic Dudley Saunders. Saunders described the Tournee as “a specialized event that shows signs of moving into the movie mainstream,” correctly presaging the renaissance in feature-length animation in the 1990s generally and Pixar specifically, whose Luxo, Jr. short was released that same year. Of Tony, Saunders singles it out as “one of the most technologically advanced,” and that it featured “some delightful music from Marie Bastien.” He then throws his hands up: "Computers were used in this Canadian entry. Don’t ask how.” Saunders was long-time film critic for the C-J’s afternoon counterpart, the Louisville Times, throughout the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s. In the late 1980s, he would co-found Louisville’s free alternative weekly, the Louisville Eccentric Observer.

What was I doing? I was six and hypothetically could have seen an unrated animation festival, though I'd have been a little bit too young to have fully appreciated it. Although, who knows, I’m sure I was watching four hours of cartoons a day at the time, so maybe my taste was really catholic.

How do I see it in 2018? It’s on YouTube.

A four-hour-a-day diet of cartoons was probably on the lower end for most of my peers. I grew up during what I believe is commonly known as the Garbage Age of Animation, which you can trace roughly from The Aristocrats in 1970 to The Little Mermaid (or The Simpsons) in 1989. The quantity of animation was high, and the quality was low. Those twenty years were a wasteland for Disney, and even though I have fond memories of a lot of those movies, like The Black Cauldron, they’re a pretty bleak bunch compared to what was sitting in those legendary Disney vaults, waiting patiently to be released on home video.

Other than low-quality Disney releases, the 1980s were highlighted mostly by the post-’70s crap was being churned out of the Hanna-Barbera laboratories. Either that, or nutrition-free Saturday morning toy commercials like The Smurfs and G.I. Joe. Of course there’s also Don Bluth, whose work is kind of brilliant, but whose odd feature-length movies seem very out-of-step with the times. Don Bluth movies seem now like baroque Disney alternatives for weird, dispossessed kids who didn’t yet realize they were weird and dispossessed. (Something like The Secret of NIMH is like Jodorowsky compared to, say, 101 Dalmatians.) Most of the bright spots of those years were produced under the patronage of the saint of 1980s suburbia, Steven Spielberg. An American Tale or Tiny Toon Adventures aren’t regarded today as auteurist masterpieces of animation (or are they?), but they were really smart and imaginative if you were nine years old. Still, the idea that cartoons might be sophisticated enough to be enjoyed by non-stoned adults was probably very alien concept in 1985.

In the midst of all of this, though, scattered throughout the world were a bunch of programmers and animators working out the next regime. Within ten years of Tony de Peltrie, Pixar’s Toy Story would be the first feature-length CGI animated movie, and within another ten years, traditional hand-drawn animation, at least for blockbuster commercial purposes, would be effectively dead. That went for both kids and their parents. Animation, like comic books, would take on a new sophistication and levels of respectability in the coming decades.

I love it when you read an old newspaper review with the benefit of hindsight, and find that the critic has gotten it right in predicting how things may play out in years to come. That’s why I was excited to read in Saunders’ review of the Tournee that he suspected animation as an artform was showing “signs of moving into the movie mainstream.” His sense of confusion (or wonder, or some combination) at the computer-generated aspects is charming in retrospect, too.

Tony de Peltrie is a landmark in computer-generated animation, but its lineage doesn’t really travel through the Pixar line at all (even though John Lassetter himself served on the award panel for the film festival where it was first shown, and predicted it’d be regarded as a landmark piece of animation). The children of the 1970s and ‘80s grew up to revere the golden era of Pixar movies as adults, and the general consensus is that not only are they great technical accomplishments, but works of great emotional resonance.

As much of an outlier as it makes me: I just don’t know. I haven’t really thought so. I think most Pixar movies are really, really sappy in the most obvious way possible. The oldest ones look to me as creaky as all those rotoscoped Ralph Bakshi cartoons of the ‘70s. Which is fine, technology is one thing -- most silent movies look pretty creaky, too -- but the underlying of armature of refined Disney sap that supports the whole structure strains to the point of collapse after a time or two.

Film critic Emily Yoshida said it best on Twitter: she noted, when Incredibles 2 came out, she’d recently re-watched the first Incredibles and was shocked at how crude it looked. "The technoligization of animation will not do individual works favors over time,” she wrote. “The wet hair effect in INCREDIBLES, which I remember everyone being so excited about, felt like holding a first generation iPod. Which is how these movies have trained people to watch them on a visual level...as technology.” There’s something here that I think Yoshida is alluding to about Pixar movies that is very Silicon Valley-ish in the way they’re consumed, almost as status symbols, or as luxury products. This is true nearly across all sectors of the tech industry now, but it’s particularly evident with animation.

One of my favorite movie events of the year is when the Landmark theaters here in Minneapolis play the Oscar-nominated animated shorts at the beginning of the year. Every year, it’s the same: you’ll get a collection of fascinating experiments from all over the world, some digitally rendered, some hand-drawn. They don’t always work, and some of them are really bad, but there’s always such a breadth of styles, emotions and narratives that I’m always engaged and delighted. They remind you that, in animation, you can do anything you want. You can go anywhere, try everything, show anything a person can imagine. Seeing the animated shorts every year, more than anything else, gets me so excited about what movies can be.

And then, in the middle of the program, there’s invariably some big gooey, sentimental mush from Pixar. Not all of them are bad, and some are quite nicely done, but for the most part, it’s cute anthropomorphized animals or objects or kids placed in cute, emotionally manipulative situations. I usually go refill my Diet Coke or take a bathroom break during the Pixar sequence.

Yeah, yeah, I know. What kind of monster hates Pixar? 

I don’t hate Pixar, and I like most of the pre-Cars 2 features just fine. The best parts of Toy Story and Up and Wall-E are as good as people say they are. But when you take the reputation that Pixar has had for innovation and developing exciting new filmmaking technology in the past 25 years, and compare it to the reality, there’s an enormous gap. And it drives me nuts, because if this is supposed to be the best American animation has to offer in terms of innovation and emotional engagement, it's not very inspiring. Especially placed alongside the sorts of animated shorts that come out of independent studios elsewhere in the U.S., or Japan, or France, or Canada. 

Which brings us to Tony de Peltrie, created in Montreal by four French-Canadian animators, and supported in part by the National Film Board of Canada, who would continue to nurture and support animation projects in Canada through the twenty-first century. A huge part of the enjoyment -- and for me, there was an enormous amount of enjoyment in watching Tony de Peltrie -- is seeing this entirely new way of telling stories and conveying images appear in front of you for the first time. Maybe it’s because I have clear memories of a world without contemporary CGI, but I still find this enormous sense of wonder in what’s happening as Tony is onscreen. I still remember very clearly seeing the early landmarks of computer-aided graphics, and being almost overwhelmed with a sense of awe -- Tron, Star Trek IV, Jurassic Park. Tony feels a bit like that, even after so many superior technical accomplishments that followed.

Tony de Peltrie doesn’t have much of a plot. A washed-up French-Canadian entertainer recounts his past glories as he sits at the piano and plays, and then slowly dissolves over a few minutes into an amorphous, impressionistic void. (Part of the joke, I think, is using such cutting-edge technology to tell the story of a white leather shoe-clad artist whose work has become very unfashionable by the 1980s.) It’s really just a monologue. The content could be conveyed using a live actor, or traditional hand-drawn animation.  

But Tony looks so odd, just sitting on the edge of the Uncanny Valley, dangling those white leather shoes into the void. Part of the appeal is that, while Tony’s monologue is so human and delivered in such an off-the-cuff way, you’re appreciating the challenge of having the technology match the humanity. Tony’s chin and eyes and fingers are exaggerated, like a caricature, but there’s such a sense of warmth underneath the chilliness of the computer-rendered surfaces. Though it’s wistful and charming, you wouldn’t necessarily call it a landmark in storytelling -- again, it’s just a monologue, and not an unfamiliar one -- but it is a technological landmark in showing that the computer animation could be used to humane ends. It’d be just as easy to make Tony fly through space or kill robots or whatever else. But instead, you get an old, well-worn story that slowly eases out of the ordinary into the surreal, and happens so gradually you lose yourself in a sort of trance.

As Yoshida wrote, technoligization of animation doesn’t do individual works favors over time. To that end, something like Tony can’t be de-coupled from its impressive but outdated graphics. These landmarks tend to be more admired than watched -- to the extent that it’s remembered at all, it’s as a piece of technology, and not as a piece of craft or storytelling.

Still, Tony is the ancestor of every badly rendered straight-to-Netflix animated talking-animals feature cluttering up your queue, but he’s also the ancestor of any experiment that tries to apply computer-generated imagery to ways of storytelling. In that sense, he has as much in common with Emily in World of Tomorrow as he does with Boss Baby, a common ancestor to any computer-generated human-like figure with a story. When Tony dissolves into silver fragments at the end of the short, it’s as if those pieces flew out into the world, through the copper wires that connect the world’s animation studios and personal computers, and are now present everywhere. He’s like a ghost that haunts the present. I feel that watching it now, and I imagine audiences sitting at the Vogue in 1986 might have felt a stirring of something similar.

[simpmaru-nara]

Re: Thor Ragnarok

Okay so I’ve got a lot to say about this movie so I recommend you settle in for the long haul. Also there’s gonna be spoilers obv since I’ll have to reference the movie to make some of my points. I’ll try to stay away from any big ones, but go into this knowing that it will spoil some points.

To get started I’d like to say that if you are going to see the movie for pure entertainment value then the movie’s pretty alright; gorgeous graphics, some good jokes, fun costumes, etc. But even in that aspect much of the action was lackluster simply because it was often diminished to make room for dialogue or to cut to uninteresting parts of a fight. For instance in the final big fight there are three different points of interest and we spend too much time seeing the least fun parts of all those fights. And the gladiator scenes, which were extremely played up in the trailers, only last for about ten minutes and end by leaving the viewers both confused and disappointed.

In fact “confused and disappointed” was the mood for the entire movie

Despite excessive exposition the story somehow manages to be extremely vague with lots of unanswered questions. The first ten minutes of the movie is just Thor explaining how he ended up in the position we find him in and explaining the plot-important villain he faces. It tells instead of shows and is interrupted several times to make way for uncharacteristic jokes. It’s boring as hell and still doesn’t answer most questions one could have about what’s been happening to Thor since last we saw him. Then it transitions in probably the most disappointing way possible to answer a question that people have been burning with since the cliffhanger in the last Thor movie; what happened to Asgard and Loki? Thor arrives in Asgard to find Loki; who apparently has been met with zero suspicion in the face of extremely odd behavior and the creation of a god damn gold statue. Despite being questioned at every turn by the Warriors Three and Sif (who was suspiciously absent in this movie but I’ll get to that later) in the first movie, apparently in this movie everyone is content to praise the saint Loki who died for their sins. The entire situation is treated with a lot of nonchalance even after Loki is unmasked. Even more casual is the mention of the time that has passed with Loki in charge and absolutely nothing is said about what he’s done as king. Several movies building up Loki’s desire to rule, believing himself more worthy than his hot-headed brother, only for it to end up being something he does nothing note-worthy with. We were led to expect more. Oh and also apparently Thor and Jane broke up? Why? Oh right because we needed room for his new love interest. Of course this type of empty story telling carries on throughout the entire movie. It’s never truly explained how the last Valkyrie survived or how Bruce ended up in space.

Actually I’d like to talk about that last one a little more. The writers behind this movie used huge cop-outs in a few key points. One of the biggest was Hulk explaining what happened to him after the events of Age of Ultron. They used the dumb child-like personality they built for him as a way of dodging responsibility for explaining how the hell Hulk even ended up where he was. The quinjet, as far as we know, is not a space-faring vessel. It’s a god damn plane and yet we’re meant to believe that somehow the Hulk managed to fly that thing into space and make it far away from Earth and crash land on Sakaar before anywhere else. It’s ridiculous yet it’s the only explanation we’re offered from an illiterate Hulk. More than that we aren’t given any reason for why Thor is in the Hulk’s quarters. It’s made fairly clear that Hulk’s feelings towards Thor are mixed and the Grand Master wanted Thor dead in order to keep his Champion but for some reason both keep Thor alive and even choose to let him stay with Hulk? And no one questions it; not even Thor.

Thor, and the entire cast for that matter, is wildly out of character the entirety of the movie. Everyone is ripped to shreds in favor of humor. It’s like the writers went, “Hmmm, how do we make Bruce Banner funny? Oh!! I know! Just make him really weird for no apparent reason and also give him mood swings because we’re just going to forget that he had complete control prior to this movie and instead he’s going to be neurotic.” And they did that to everyone. Thor had a sense of humor in the earlier movies; typically more subtle and friendly, but here he’s openly sarcastic bordering on cynical. His jokes come across more Stark-ish (if Tony suddenly genuinely stopped caring) than they do Thor’s brand of humor. And Loki. God Loki... he’s reduced to a running joke about betrayal and being untrustworthy. “Silver tongued” Loki appears to have lost any amount of wit or actual mischief and is instead predictable and weirdly subdued. And all of this humor is ill-timed.

The writers absolutely refuse to give a single moment in the movie any depth. Any time that the plot manages to touch on something meaningful there’s humor thrown in as a buffer that only succeeds in forcefully detaching you from the plights of the characters. Thor’s in a cage and being threatened by the literal catalyst of Ragnarok? Better toss in a couple of jokes so it doesn’t seem too intense. Thor and Loki actually have a chance to talk about their problems and/or work as a team to establish a dynamic? Better make a joke about how easily Loki will throw Thor under the bus. Odin just died and Mjolnir was destroyed? Quick lets move onto the next thing before things get too heavy. The movie completely fails in making you care about anyone in the main cast. In fact, the person I was most invested in for the entire movie was Heimdal. The man has a total of maybe 10 minutes of screen time, but damn if he wasn’t the most interesting thing going on in the story. That’s at least half way because they didn’t try to force any awkward humor with him and they didn’t kill him. Which they killed a lot of characters in this movie and never give it the proper time or even weight to be grieved over.

Among the characters who were killed were the Warriors Three. A fact which is never acknowledged even as it happens. We at least get told (through Exposition Golem Alien because the audience can’t be trusted to deduce anything obviously) that Mjolnir being destroyed is a heavy weight on Thor and we see briefly the level of grief Thor feels for the loss of Odin, but the Warriors Three were Thor’s best friends. He grew up around them, adventured with them, they play a significant part in the first Thor movie, yet even before they die they’re widely forgotten about both by the plot and by Thor. Interestingly enough, however, is that Sif does not appear in this movie.

Sif remains completely AWOL for the entire movie, and honestly I’m pretty sure the reason is because the writers were reluctant to kill her off since she’s the Hot Warrior Babe. Because obviously they showed no hesitation in getting rid of the warriors as a casualty of the opposition to Hela and if Sif had been present she would have been right beside them and equally dead. Couldn’t do that so instead she’s just mysteriously not there. And I make this accusation with more than just Sif in mind. The movie also doesn’t want you to think that Hela isn’t attractive. In every scene we see her in she starts with her hair down in a sexy cat suit until she’s ready to fight at which point her wild black hair turns into her war helmet. There’s no real reason for the transition other than the fact that if she was always sporting the war helmet then she would come across as less attractive.

Besides the casual “must remain sexy” attitude towards Hela there was also a huge lack of continuity in the story, which kind of ties in with the lack questions answered, but still stands as it’s own problem. In the first Thor movie Odin takes Thor’s powers and casts an enchantment on Mjolnir. “Whosoever holds this hammer, should he be worth, shall possess the power of Thor.” Obviously Thor is the one to eventually pick up the hammer again and regain his power, but the importance of Mjolnir relative to Thor’s abilities is not diminished at that point. Yet magically in this movie Thor doesn’t need Mjolnir he just has these powers naturally. Even though, you know, Asgardians have never been shown to just naturally have elemental abilities and it was established that Thor doesn’t have much magic prowess the way Loki does. But that’s okay we’ll just ignore that because it’s really cool to see Thor turn into an anime character with glowing white eyes and electric fists (an ability he didn’t have even when he possessed Mjolnir). Also there’s the fact that Asgard’s history is vaguely outlined in the first movie as well and it’s made very clear that Odin is not the one who carved a spot for the golden city. He’s not the first king; his father was king before him. So no, Hela, you didn’t help Odin drown the realms in blood especially not while he was busy trying to end a war with Jotunheim as was explained as what he was doing around the time Thor was born and Loki was adopted. And it’s not just this either; there were plenty of other errors there, even with Doctor Strange.

And the scene with the Doc was odd in it’s own right. Last we saw of Doctor Strange he was giving up the infinity stone and taking over the New York sanctum as a talented, but still young sorcerer. When we see him in this movie he throws around magic like candy; appearing to be extremely proficient and wearing a familiar comic-book-esque outfit. Which raises the question, where is he relative to the power he (if we’re to go off the comics) is meant to possess? Is he the supreme now? What has he been doing since the end of his movie? The timeline is wonky at best and leaves you grasping blindly to try and put it together. It’s only made worse by the first after-credits scene which seems to be leaning into Infinity Wars territory.

Honestly I could talk about everything this movie could have done better for hours. I could pick apart the entire movie start to finish for all the things that were just wrong. But this is already an essay sized post so I’m gonna wrap it up. I care about this franchise. I care about the MCU. And that’s why it makes me so upset, as a fellow writer, to see how god damn lazy every part of Thor: Ragnarok was. The writer’s consistently and shamelessly cop-out of any meaningful story telling. “Show not tell” is a concept burned, drowned, and buried. They tear apart these beloved characters so thoroughly that they are nearly unrecognizable all in the pursuit of getting some good one-liners out there. I don’t have the words to describe my disappointment because Thor isn’t the first recent Marvel movie to do this. Guardians of the Galaxy 2 made some similar mistakes and now I’m feeling like the MCU no longer cares about building a coherent story line with dimensional characters. Instead they just care about making a movie as quotable as possible so that they sell some merch. And that’s a shame; I don’t want to see the MCU die because of a cash grab that sacrifices legitimate investment in the franchise.

[gingerly-writing]

Hello? I'm currently trying to write a superhero novel and I'm extremely bad at it. Can you help me, like just give a few tips? I'm really excited about this project so your help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Hello dear Anon! You have definitely come to the write (hehe) place. I have so much advice (and hard lessons learnt) to share that I almost burst with information when I saw this ask in my inbox. I’ve tried to trim it down a bit so I don’t clog up people’s dashes, but this is still gonna be pretty long. (Also, this is my 4,500 post on this blog, quite coincidentally, and I also just passed 700 followers. Consider this advice post my celebration!)

This is a novel, not a comic book series.

You won’t be able to convey every awesome aspect of your characters’ looks without boring the reader to death.

Some tropes don’t translate well. At all.

Nothing is wholly original, not anymore. But you can still come up with something you can comfortably call your own.

Action scenes will either become your trusty sidekick or your archnemesis (and each one can turn out to be either).

LESS. IS. MORE.

1) This is a novel, not a comic book series. Even if you write a whole series of novels, you don’t have the page space to waste on the tens or hundreds of smaller villains you might find littered across a Batman series. First of all, everyone your hero encounters has to be fleshed out at least somewhat, and that takes up both space on the page and in your reader’s mind as they try to keep track of everyone you’ve introduced. If you need to make your hero seem as though they’ve been around for a while and save a lot of lives on the regular, have them namedrop villains they’ve defeated or muse about just how many civilians they must have saved over the years and how that makes it all worth it.

What I’m saying is, you need a coherent plot. Obviously the journey from A to B needs ups and downs, but those probably shouldn’t consist of 18 minor villains with the Big Bad at the end unless all the attacks turn out to be related. Keep your plot tidy, and remember, this is a novel. For the first book at least, you might be better off sticking with one supervillain/group as your major antagonist, with subplots constructed from other, less major conflicts (tension with law enforcement, other heroes, collapsing marriage, love interest, high school issues etc. etc.). In my first attempt at a superhero novel, I had my hero (Ace) fighting gangs and cleaning up the streets, saving kids from their own stupidity, dealing with a new addictive and highly highly dangerous drug pouring into his city, trying to uncover who or what the Crime Syndicate was, fending off the police who were trying to arrest him, and a bunch of civilian life problems too, including his mother and best friend trying to work out what he was hiding, passing university and finding a job, all on top of tracking down and fighting his newfound nemesis. This is a slightly exaggerated list, but you can see what I’m talking about. Too much going on can kill your coherency, even if it’s the kind of winding plot you’re used to seeing on comics.

My tip here: pick one main villain, or gang, or anti-hero etc. –pick only one major villainous entity. Stack in one to three sideplots. Make sure everything is coherent and leads your hero from A to B, whether they know it or not. It might be a superhero novel, but it’s a novel above all. Stick to your basic plotting rules, and you’ll be a-okay.

2) You won’t be able to get down every aspect of your character’s awesome outfit. This is another rule applicable to everything, but it’s especially hard to resists in a genre where a hero’s public image is often built from their outfit and powers as much as what they stand for. But imagine if you had to read a block paragraph description of Batman’s outfit? He wears all-black, with a cowl covering the top half of his face that has pointy bat ears which electrocutes you if you try to take it off. He also wears eyeliner to cover the skin around his eyes. He never smiles, and his voice is a deep growl. His chest plate is black and decorated with false abs and a bat-symbol, which is yellow or black depending on whether he’s in camouflage- YAWN! I’m bored just typing all that out.

Pick defining characteristics for all of them. My villainess has candyfloss pink hair, a slow smile and a dappled black outfit fit for a thief. My hero is half-Japanese, wielding a glowing blue sword (which might become a shield in the edits) and donning his heirloom hero suit of black and matching glowing blue. It’s not a lot, and I drop in other details here and there (she carries smoke bombs and knives in her boots, he can’t wink), but sticking to core, important details when describing their outfits in particular can give a pretty clear idea without choking the reader.

3) Some tropes don’t translate well. At all. Put aside the rampant racism, the homophobia, the general mistreatment of many minorities in the comic industry. Put aside the America-centrism and the fridging of ‘pure’ girlfriends and the slutty villainess alike. These are all problems, but they also exist outside of the superhero genre.

Here, I’m talking space radiation giving people powers, killing their loved ones, serving the plot in any which way. I’m talking Superman’s 800 superpowers and Luthor’s inability to figure out his secret ID despite being the smartest man on the planet. I’m talking fallacies of logic, stretching the suspension of disbelief far past breaking point, Gary Stus galore. I’m talking Guy Gardener’s bowlcut. Y’know, just generally bad writing.

You’re going to have to come up with more original power-origins and better haircuts than they did in the Golden Age, I’m afraid. While I genuinely wish I could get in the invisible brainwave-controlled escape boomerangs from Captain Boomerang in the Silver Age, it doesn’t work so well in a pseudo-serious novel. But work a little harder at your worldbuilding than the golden oldies had to, and you’ll have everything down pat.

4) Nothing is wholly original, not anymore. But you can still come up with something you can comfortably call your own. This is linked to point three. Everything has been done. Every superpower, every storyline, every outfit, magic item, warping of genes. You name it, someone, somewhere, whether inside or outside the big comic houses, has done it. This is common with all ideas, but with superheroes you know some all-knowing jackass will pop out of the woodwork like ‘actually this was the plot of Assman #236 in 1987 and your just a hack’ if you ever publish your work.

Fuck ‘em. You might not be able to create something wholly original, but you can create something with a twist. From your superpowers and gadgets, to your plotlines and your worldbuilding, to your hero leagues and villain cadres and your mob squads –you can create something fresh, something we’ve never seen before, something that will open mouths and eyes and hearts. Everything can be original if you take it and play.

5) Action scenes will either become your trusty sidekick or your archnemesis (and each one can turn out to be either). Some will flow from your pen (or keyboard) as though the Muses themselves are scribing your words with golden ink. Other times, you will want to strangle every one of your characters, and throw their weapons, your writing implements and yourself out of the window. The real problem is that action scenes tend to be crucial to this genre, and you never know which fight scene is going to bite you in the ass.

It’s okay if you’re terrible at them (like me). Sketch what you need out of the scene in terms of plot, and then research to your heart’s content (while remembering this is a genre built on ridiculousness and you can stretch reality as far as you need). Then, as with wit, remember you don’t have to be an expert fighter. Unlike your characters, you can write and rewrite and play and mess with until everything is exactly how you want it.

LESS. IS. MORE. I think this is the sum total of my advice, though bear in mind that I’m a massive overwriter: if you underwrite, you might need to flip some of this advice on its head. In my experience, keep your original plot tight, because it will expand with heroic shenanigans and villainous sideplots. Keep your initial character description to key characteristics, and build in the cool, extraneous details over time. Watch out for some of the good old tropes (and not just the bigoted ones) that simply don’t translate well into a modern novel. Play with your assumptions, your tropes and anything else you can get your hands on, but don’t be too afraid to hang onto some of the old classics: this is a genre known for its fun tropes, after all.

If you need any more general writing advice, feel free to come back! You are talking to someone who wrote 60,000+ words of my core superhero novel and scrapped every single one of them, who’s plotted out seven superhero novels and counting, and who may or may not be far too in love with this genre.

But over everything else, remember to take all advice -including and especially mine- with a large pinch of salt. Come talk to me off anon if you just want to chat about superheroes, I don’t bite (and I really, really love superheroes).

Thanks for the ask!xx

[niennavalier]

Okay cause I just reblogged that post about Savitar theories and since I haven’t kept up on a lot of Flash stuff, I feel like commenting on this. Under the cut cause I ramble.

First six on that list are things I’m definitely down for. I mean, I make it no secret I supported Zoom!Barry last season, so I’ve been all for the Savitar!Barry this season. Just...Dark!Barry in general is a personal favorite of mine and something I’ve wanted to write into fic for a while, tbh.

I didn’t even know Eddie was a theory, but I’m for that. I miss him (also I think it’d be kinda interesting to see Rick Cosnett act this part? Especially after the totally creepy vibe he managed in the Speedforce episode). Aside from the science-y factor that makes this possible cause singularities and comic book science, the guilt on Barry’s part over this would be insane and wonderful. And him killing Iris? Damn...

Ronnie - I started speculating that from the end of last episode. Not much to say here though...

I’ve seen the Cobalt Blue theory and yes! I don’t know much about the comic book background there, but what I read sounds really cool.

Iris though! I never considered that, but the argument is really neat. And convoluted but totally awesome (because yes, I’m that person). That’d just be a really cool twist to throw in there. Plus a female seasonal big bad would be fantastic. (Seriously, none of the DCTV shows have done this, have they? IDK about Supergirl, but pretty sure none of the others have).

And in terms of the speedsters, okay, I’m actually in support of the Jay one? I mean, it’d be kinda lame to have another of Barry’s mentors be evil (what is this, third times the charm?) but it fits? Barry trapping him in the Speedforce can be twisted with Jay being stuck there right now. And Savitar saying that Barry trapped him in the future technically works, given the way the episodes fall. The Speedforce episode came afterwards. Also that “first speedster” thing fits. In universe, I don’t know if that’s technically true, but Jay is Golden Age Flash so...I mean it does fit, in a way. I personally don’t suspect Jesse or Eliza, unless they really pull something weird. Wally would be interesting though...

The crack theories though.

Savitar being Len. Like...I find this hilarious for the weirdest reasons. If they did this it’d just be sooooo bizarre I can’t even explain. I mean, yes I want Len back, and wow wouldn’t that be a blow to poor Barry after finding out from Ray that Len died a hero? And knowing it’s actually due to his influence? But that would just be...strange. Especially knowing about his part in 3x22? It doesn’t really make sense to me? Unless however we’re getting him back has something to do with him becoming Savitar? IDK. (Weird though, he’s the only one of the Speedforce ghosts who isn’t really in consideration for being Savitar...) TBH I need to read the full on theories here though, cause all I can guess is they’re some extension of Oculus!Snart or based on whatever weirdness Barry’s gonna pull in 3x22.

The rest just make me laugh (honestly I only talk about Len in terms of the crack theories cause I always talk about Len). Humanized Grodd is also bizarre but I’m down just cause Flash has been so dark I think that’s the right level of weird that I won’t mind anymore. Patty would be interesting and painful, but I don’t see the grounds for it (and it would probably turn this into something about Barry picking Iris over her or something which...no thanks). Actually...Clariss would be kinda cool? IMO he was a wasted plot point this season that they built up and just sorta fell flat. So I wouldn’t mind if this is the case, although it wouldn’t have the most incredible impact on the characters, which is sorta disappointing for me (also Killer Frost’s reaction would make no sense). Don’t watch Arrow so I don’t even know what’s going on with Diggle’s child/children/was it that Sara turned into John aka Connor Hawke? I don’t know...

Random hot dude though. I’d be down. I mean, that’s relatable, right? I mean, if I were her and her friends didn’t accept her as KF (which is kiiiinda what is said in the future episode I think? I’m taking liberties here) and Savitar showed up, took off the mask and it was, say, Bucky/Seb? (This is my own imagining, mind you). And he had the same goal as me, wanted to work with me? I would definitely not say no.

[aaronmaurer]

Movies I Liked in 2017

Every year I reflect on the pop culture I enjoyed and put it in some sort of order.

2017 offered a wide variety of quality films and narrowing the list down to 10 (my arbitrary tradition) proved difficult this year – worthy contenders The Big Sick, A Ghost Story, Get Out, Coco and Molly’s Game didn’t make the final cut. As always, my tastes run from populist blockbusters to under-seen indies, so there’s probably something for everyone here.

10. The Florida Project

A piece of indie film-making that blends humanist realism and irreverent Little Rascals-inspired mischief, the Florida Project presents the lives of the hidden homeless, specifically 6-year-old Moonee and her single mom Halley, navigating life at run-down hotels in the shadow of Walt Disney World. The film engages with issues of income inequality and the working poor without making judgments or looking down on its subjects. Even though Halley makes increasingly negative choices, we see that she desires to give her daughter the best childhood she knows how. Willem Defoe’s supporting performance as the hotel’s manager is one of deep humanity and compassion. Heartwarming and heartbreaking, it’s a movie that sticks with you.

9. Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi

Writer-director Rian Johnson’s chapter of the Skywalker saga excels because it isn’t precious about what has come before. While there are no “I am your father”-level twists, there are plenty of subverted expectations which keeps things compelling, as do the performances. Returning are all the characters introduced in The Force Awakens plus Mark Hamill in what may be his finest screen performance as an aging and disillusioned Luke. Not to mention Carrie Fisher’s final turn as General Leia. While I give a slight edge to the prior entry, The Last Jedi has its own share of indelible visuals, getting great mileage out of its black, white and red color palette. I have no idea where the story goes from here, and that’s a pretty exciting place to be.

8. The Post

A movie seemingly easy to write-off as prestige awards bait because of its old-school competence and pedigree (I’ve heard it referred to as the “whitest movie of the year”), The Post is nevertheless both absorbing and relevant to the current moment. Steven Spielberg! directs Tom Hanks! and Meryl Streep! (and a stacked supporting cast) in the true story of the Washington Post’s (and New York Times’) decision to publish the Pentagon Papers, leaked government reports about futility of the situation in Vietnam dating back to Truman. What follows is a resonant portrayal of the importance of a free press and a female leader finding her voice in the midst of an entrenched patriarchy. While it doesn’t quite reach the level of recent classic Spotlight, it is still quite worthy of your time.

 7. Logan Lucky

Director Steven Soderbergh (the Oceans trilogy) returns to the big screen after a few years of “retirement” with another heist film. This time though, it’s not a sleek takedown of high-end casinos – it’s a racetrack robbery in rural North Carolina. The cast includes Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Riley Keough and a hilarious Daniel Craig who all seem to be having a blast. There are some plot detours that don’t lead anywhere (Katherine Waterston as a mobile health clinic doctor?), but I wouldn’t change anything. Actually, I’d probably replace Seth MacFarlane’s energy drink entrepreneur – his obnoxiousness fits but his presence is a distraction. Despite that, the film is just as entertaining as Danny Ocean’s capers, with a touch more emotional depth.

5 (tie). Spider-man: Homecoming, Thor: Ragnarok

I’m a sucker for superheroes and 2017 was a banner year for movies based on Marvel properties. (Logan and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 were also notable, but not quite at the same level as these two for me.)

Spider-Man: Homecoming achieved what I would have considered impossible just a few years ago: making me want to see a Spider-Man movie again. After the Andrew Garfield reboot/cashgrab, I was burnt out on one of my favorite characters, but Sony and Marvel’s negotiations to bring him into the MCU provided fresh inspiration. Winningly presented as a true teenager (who doesn’t graduate and head to college after 20 minutes) Tom Holland is the best onscreen Peter Parker yet (said as a fan of Tobey McGuire’s time in the role), and the film balances the heart and humor of the character perfectly. Michael Keaton does a great villainous turn as the Vulture, imbuing him with both menace and humanity.            

Thor: Ragnarok achieved something nearly as impossible: having me look forward to – and enjoy – a Thor movie! Director Taika Waititi reinvigorates that franchise with a hearty infusion of humor and new characters, including Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie, Cate Blanchett as Hela, Jeff Goldblum as Grandmaster and Waititi himself voicing rock monster Korg. The light touch and all-bets-are-off plotting work wonders and even make the film’s place-setting for Avengers 3 palatable. (Although – possible spoiler – I do have to call out one incredibly tone-deaf scene in which a villain’s redemption occurs when he plunges into battle brandishing a pair of American assault rifles. How that glorification of such an insidious device got greenlit in today’s climate I have no idea.)           

But the comic book adaptations don’t end there…

 4. Wonder Woman

DC finally succeeded in realizing Wonder Woman’s first big screen solo outing this year, and in the process, made the first worthwhile film in its shared universe. The care and quality invested by director Patty Jenkins and her crew just shine: memorable production design, beautiful cinematography and believable effects work (contrasted with this fall’s Justice League that, far from feeling like a culmination of its predecessors, is flat, flimsy, cheap and rushed). And Gal Gadot’s embodiment of the character is pitch-perfect in strength, warmth, goodness, idealism and, well, wonder. This is a film that should not have taken this many decades to make, but even so, found the perfect cultural moment to inspire and empower.

 3. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

I’m honestly not sure how to write about the latest film from writer-director Martin McDonagh. When I saw it back in November, I found it incredibly engaging, riotously hilarious and intermittently – intentionally – unsettling. As a fan of McDonagh’s equally compelling, profane and violent In Bruges, I got what I expected. So, under normal circumstances I’d be excited that this relatively niche film somehow netted a Golden Globe for Best Drama (even though it’s hard to pigeonhole into that genre); however, there’s a vocal backlash growing that I understand even if I don’t fully agree with. POTENTIAL SPOILERS FOLLOW: For a pretty good breakdown of the controversy that also tracks with most of my feelings, check out this article on the AV Club. For my part, I don’t believe the film endorses, condones or forgives Sam Rockwell’s brutal and racist cop. While he exhibits a few signs of change toward the end, he is not rewarded for his actions and is not a redeemed hero (nor for that matter is Francis McDormand’s grieving and angry mother). I think the film is more about the idea that violence begets and escalates violence and that understanding, compassion and growth come from community, connection and human decency. (McDonagh’s use of violence is shocking and uncomfortable, rather than celebratory like Tarantino.) That said, the film’s ending could be taken as an endorsement of vengeance, which I don’t sanction, but there is hope to me that Rockwell and McDormand’s characters won’t follow through with their quest but will instead find greater healing and evolution as they embark on a journey together. It’s a film that lives in gray areas even as its own characters make black-and-white demands on each other. However, I recognize I’m viewing through the eyes of privilege and I recognize there are plenty of potential triggers, so you’ll have to draw your own conclusions.

2. Dunkirk

A World War II epic focused more on the will to survive than traditional “heroism,” Dunkirk throws the audience into the experience of British forces’ escape from German-occupied France. Writer-director Christopher Nolan employs a bit of his nesting-doll plotting from Inception and expertly crafts a  white knuckle ride, cutting back-and-forth between land, sea and air until they all come together in a powerful and breathless climax. Not since Gravity has there been a more pulse-pounding exploitation of the power of the big screen.

 1. Lady Bird

Perfectly observed and realized, Greta Gerwig’s portrait of a high school senior navigating life and family is both specific and universal in its appeal. Laugh out loud funny, moving and relatable, this very human film transcends coming-of-age tropes as it deals with class issues, generational conflict and adolescent heartbreak. Two years after playing a slighter older character in Brooklyn, Saoirse Ronin fully embodies the titular teenager in all of her idiosyncratic glory while Laurie Metcalf does a phenomenal job as her mother trying to hold it all together. Beautiful.

[smokeybrandreviews]

We Can Be Heroes

So i took in Ragnarok a second time and even wrote an in depth review about it. I said i wanted to compare and contrast between JL, more because Marvel has released some solid films both directly from Marvel Studios and their franchised heroes to other studios, in particular Fox. Logan is the second greatest cape flick i have ever seen, after the Dark Knight. I don’t throw that distinction around lightly because TDK is one of the greatest films, overall, ever made and Logan can give it a run for it’s money any day. Outside of that flick, Homecoming was spectacular and so was Guardians. I have already gushed about Ragnarok and even Wonder Woman was on point. So why was Justice League so bad? Why did no one go to see it?

I’m not sating that Justice League is a flop. Of course not. It made a pretty penny. It had, like, a 96 million dollar opening last week. Cash money. The thing is, if i know the box office, that’s unsustainable. A good drop in the week two run is around 40 to 50 percent. I’m not sure what the week two drop was but, considering all of the cats i saw looking to check out Coco and the fact my screening of Ragnarok was full, i imagine it’s going to be pretty substantial. Probably high 50 to mid 60s which is not was Warner Bros. wants. That’d be terrible news. Considering it only made about 185 mil in the foreign markets over opening weekend, that mid 60percent is looking better and better. So how is it Marvel keeps knocking these things out of the park and DC keeps stumbling across the finish line? As a comic fan, Marvel Fanboy, and cinemaphile, i wanted to throw my two cents into the argument because i find it all very intriguing

DCEU Fatigue

There are cats talking about superhero fatigue. I’ve been hearing that thrown around a lot lately. I don’t think that’s accurate. There are too many of us millennials out here, of age, starting our own families, that are afflicted with that crazy childhood nostalgia because we’re all latchkey kids, particularly the older of us. Cats like me, born in the early to mid 80s, adore comic books and Saturday morning cartoons. We loved the escapism as the excess of greed and selfishness during the 80s tore our families apart. Among our “Oregon Trail” generation, we have some of the highest rates of divorce so escapism was real.  We threw ourselves into Nintendo, BTAS, and Marvel comics. We brought our younger siblings, those notorious and oft maligned by the media as the true “millennials”, those youngsters born in the 90s, into our world of comic book distraction, cartoon interference, and video game diversion. To see all of those heroes we followed as kids put up on the big screen with massive budgets and SFX spectacle is like catnip to us. The market is rife with prime demographics for these films and, as log as they’re good, there’s no stopping that machine. But that’s the overall problem.

Marvel has been doing this since 2008. They stumbled in a few outings (The two Hulk films, the first two Thor films, and to a lesser extent Iron Man 2 and Age of Ultron) but they have also shined brilliantly along the way while taking crazy risks. No one knew who the f*ck the Guardians of the Galaxy were or why Chris Pratt would even be cast in a superhero role but look; That first Guardians film is a classic and the second, even with all of it’s missteps, is a goddamn joy to watch. Pratt is a huge star now and people are looking to GOT to set that Cosmic Marvel tone. James Gunn’s visibility as a director has increased considerably, to the point that Taika Waititi took a little of their tone and levity into his own MCU outing, Ragnarok. And, again, i adored that flick. When Ultron came out and audiences reacted with mild tepidness, Marvel pulled Whedon and installed the Russos as the primary architects of MCU and look what happened. Cap 3 was ridiculous and literally every Marvel film after has scored in the 80s or 90s on Rotten Tomatoes. Not only did these cats helm arguable the best MCU film in Winter Soldier (the first Iron Man, i guess the first Avengers flick, and Homecoming might have something to say about that) but they were trusted with introducing the Marvel golden child, Spider-Man, in Civil War. and he was a goddamn hit! In my screening, people gave Pete a standing ovation. I cried manly tears when i saw him suit up. We have Black Panther on the horizon and the hype for that sh*t is explosive while Infinity war has been brewing for a decade. Marvel is coming up aces. The lowest rated film on Rotten tomatoes is The Incredible Hulk (see, them hulk flicks,man) and it’s at a 67 percent. Over almost a decade and 17 films, the MCU has an average tomatometer rating of about 83 percent.

The DCEU? different f*cking story. These cats are just the worst at this game, man. Their highest rated film is Wonder Woman. She’s sitting at a respectable 92 percent. To be honest, upon repeated viewing, i think it’s more a high 80s flick but still, for what it did with what ist had, i’m not made at the 92. Gal Gadot and Patty Jenkins crafted a heartfelt fairy tale that built up a legit female icon for girls and even boys to look at with admiration. I adore what this film meant on a social level and the fact it blew up the f*cking box office has movie execs standing at attention. Wonder Woman is the best character and overall experience to come out of this sh*tty DCEU. Everything else is trash. The next best reviewed film in the DCEU is Man of Steel, the first in the franchise, at 55 percent. That’s a far cry for the MCU’s initial outing of Iron Man at 94. My lady is a MASSIVE Supes fan and she HATED MOS. She said that wasn’t a Superman movie. She said it was a hodge-podge of nonsense. And it was. Sh*t didn’t get any better either. Since 2013, the DCEU has dropped 5 films, two of which rate less than 30 percent. their average tomatometer rating? 48.2 percent. I’ll be kind and round that up to 49 percent. Why would yo keep throwing money at a studio that ‘s dropping such awful movies? Justice League had it’s problems but i don’t think it’s 49 percent bad. I think audiences don’t trust Warner to their jobs. I think audiences are still burned by that 27 percent BvS debacle. I know they’re still reeling by that cluster f*ck of Suicide Squad. Essentially it’s fool me once, shame on you. Fool me three times, shame on me. Wonder Woman was really good but that’s because it’s more Marvel than not. But fool Me four times? Nah, breh. We learned our lesson. Cats are experiencing Superhero fatigue, we’re experiencing bad movie fatigue. We’re tired of the DCEU producing crap and don’t want to pay for another clusterf*ck. of nonsense.

No one trusts Zack Snyder because he’s awful at telling stories and DC was stupid to put him in charge of their cinematic universe to begin with

300 was dope but that movie lended itself to Snyder’s style of film making. If you’ve ever actually read Frank Miller’s 300 comic, you’d know that it’s all splash pages and action scenes. There’s very little substance in the book itself, just a bunch of cool looking sh*t. There’s no overarching narrative other than these 300 guys stood in there Persian’s way only to die fighting. That’s the narrative for 300. So, for a guy like Snyder who can’t craft a plot to get himself out of a wet paper bag, this was a tale designed for him. All that slow-mo and cg blood was just cool sh*t to see, Snyder is a master at crafting cool looking scenes to see and that 300 flick of his was cool to see Terrible film overall (non existent plot, terribly cheesy dialogue, anti climactic ending) but it was dope to see. This is where, i think, people mistook Snyder’s ability to craft a dope ass action scene for an ability to actually tell a story. People loved 300. It made 456 mil on a 60 mil budget. Critically, it sits at a 60 percent, critically and an 89 percent audience rating. Surprise-Surprise, cool looking sh*t based on cool looking sh*t is popular among the ignorant masses but falls short with people who actually engage cinema on more levels than just cool looking sh*t. So what happens when you give Snyder a heavy plot and meticulously crafted narrative to adapt to film? you get his take on Watchmen.

One of the greatest tales ever written in comic form was Watchmen. Alan Moore crafted a magnum ops of a tale and st it on the backdrop of cold war paranoia. This thing is visceral. This thing is sobering. This thing is real. It peels back the layers of our supposed society and asks hard questions about what it means to be human. So, taking this commentary rick narrative in to account, WB decided to give it to an asshole who couldn’t recognize subtext if it shoved it’s massive cock down his throat in Zack Snyder. Yes, Watchmen is pretty but does it do it’s job as an adaption? F*ck no. None of that gritty, hard question asking, almost malevolent intent at holding society hostage for it’s nonsense. None of it. Instead, we get, like, Watchmen lite. No character development. No social commentary. Not even a period correct piece. Watchmen take place in the 80s. Why do i feel like it’s present day?? Because Zack Snyder is the worst at movies. This thing made 185 mil on a 130 mil budget and sits at a 65 percent (which, i think, is Snyder’s highest critically rated film, ever) on Tomatoes. The audience score was about 71 percent, a significant drop from his last outing with 300. This is Snyder trying to create an actual movie, trying to craft a proper narrative and he lost about 17 percent of his audience,according to Rotten Tomatoes. So WB tripled down on this asshat and gave him a massive budget to do whatever the f*ck he anted with it and we got Sucker Punch. Nd OH BOY, is THAT film problematic.

So Sucker Punch was WB giving Zack Snyder carte blanche and about 8 mil to do whatever he wanted. And this mess of a rape fantasy is what we got. There are just so many thematic, social, and personal problems that ween through it’s terrible, terrible, film. You can see that Snyder hates women or, at least, thinks ridiculously less of the with all of the rampant sexism in this film. You can tell he has no idea how to actually cut a film with that lack of coherency. You can tell he has no idea how to develop characters beyond the literal and shallow tropes that are present in even the most mundane of cinema. This sh*t is a glorified, multi-million dollar, student film based on a fanfiction Snyder wrote when he was 14 years old and barely understood why he got boner or why the popular cheerleader didn’t look his way. Sucker Punch is trash. Sexist, problematic, poorly executed, wildly rapey, trash. And both the audience and critics understood that. It’s sitting at a 47 percent audience rating and a 23 percent critic rating on Tomatoes. No one liked this film. No one went to see it. It only made 89 mil on an 82 mil budget. Sucker Punch proves that Snyder is a bad filmmaker and a crackpot story teller. So WB puts him in charge of one of their most precious and profitable franchises in Superman?

This Zack Snyder is a proven loser and you give him Superman? You give him one of the most recognizable icons in the world and tell him to create a new vision that will be the linchpin of an entire cinematic world to rival the now full steam MCU? Based on 300, Watchmen, and Sucker Punch? Literally all of his films have shown woeful diminished returns but this is the guy you throw the DCEU to, after coming off the Dark Knight Trilogy? F*cking Nolan got you an Oscar on the back of Ledger’s performance as the Joker and instead of giving the reigns of the DCEU to a guy with that sort of vision, you give it to Snyder who can only craft “cool looking sh*t”? really? On top of that, you force him to bring to life a David S. Goyer script, the co-author and co-creator of that wildly successful Dark Knight trilogy, and expect Snyder to execute like Nolan did? Really? Who thought this was a good idea and why?? Where was the guy at the top to say “No”? Which brings me to my next point...

The DCEU needs a guy like Kevin Feige or Kathleen Kennedy to guide their universe and not rely so much on filmakers to execute a vision.

The DCEU needs a Feige to reign this sh*t in. I hear WB touting that a cinematic universe should be helmed by film makers or whatever and they’re tight. But there also needs to be a uniform vision. Someone needs to sit up top to guide the ship. Someone removed from the film making process but still knows a good narrative when he sees it. Someone who understand the business side of movies while understanding what’s necessary to create a compelling film. The DCEU needs a proper producer to sit on top of all of these movie directors and force them to essentially create within the formula. Yje <CU does that and look at their success. Te Star Wars universe is doing that and look at their success. Hell, the Star Wars universe is a perfect example of the same issues the DCEU is having right now.

Look at the original trilogy, Episodes IV to VI. Lucas was sitting on top, even directed the first, but stepped aside to let actual film makers craft an actual narrative after A New Hope. What did we get? F*cking classics. The Empire Strike Back is one of the greatest films ever made and sits on a very short list with The Dark Knight and The Godfather Part II as sequels better than their predecessors. Guess what happened when Lucas decided to make the Prequels himself? Yeah. George Lucas is that visionary with a lot of ideas but lacks the ability to execute them properly. He’s a lot like Zack Snyder in that way and the Prequel trilogy showed that to the world. Disney took those mistakes to heart and basically built a universe system based on the success they’ve had with the MCU and guess what? two movies in, it’s paying off. The Force Awakens and Rogue one are sitting at an average of 89 percent critic rating on Rotten tomatoes. Average. the audience rating is about 88 percent. People love these films and The Last Jedi looks to be a home run as well. They have so much confidence in Rian Johnson, they gave that cat a trilogy to develop on his own. Bet, though, that Kathleen Kennedy is going to be right there, adding her input and making sure it follows that path she has set for the future of the Star War universe. Giving the film makers themselves the reins to the entire universe is a little like letting the patients run the asylum ad the DCEU is worse off for it.

The DCEU should have followed Marvel’s blue print and taken it’s time to flesh out the principal players in their massive team up instead of copping-out with BvS as basically it’s second film into a fledgling franchise

This one, i think, is the biggest reason the DCEU is sh*t. Marvel took it’s time to execute and create a world. We had a Hulk film, two Iron Man flicks, a Thor outing, and a Cap flick before we even got to the Avengers. We knew the character. We loved the universe created. We were invested when Loki snatched the Tesseract. We were five movies into a universe, five decent movies into a world, before cats came together to face off against a rogue god and his alien army. Sure, there were course corrections. Thor was adjusted a bit and Ruffalo was recast as The Hulk but it worked. We go Nat in Iron Man 2 and Clint in Thor. And the Avengers was good. I don’t think it was Dark Knight good but it’s still pretty widely accepted as the superior film for some reason. Marvel took the time to build something. They took the time to establish something. They built up their characters and made sure audiences knew exactly ho they were and what they were about before they even attempted that team up flick. Everything felt organic. The growth felt earned. The DCEU did not go this rout. The y, instead, rushed out BvS instead of MOS II and basically sh*t all over the good will they had with audiences.

BvS should have stuck to one story and carried that over but it didn’t. t was The Dark Knight Returns and The Death of Superman with hints of For All Seasons thrown in just because and none of it meshed. BvS should have bee the climax to a DCEU phase one. Start of with a character driven story about Lois Lane investigating “The Blur” which leads her to the discovery of Superman or whatever. maybe have a token villain or some sort of world cataclysm that needed addressing just to introduced boy scout Supes and call it a day. No Krpytonians yet, maybe have them as the end credit stinger or something. We should have had a Wonder Woman movie before BvS but after SUpes, so, maybe the second one out? And then a throwback Batman outing that established his vigilantism in the past. I would have adapted that excellent Year One story or The Long Halloween, crafted a tale of mystery and noir, Batman’s strengths, as a prequel to the universe it’s self. Wonder Woman could have been exactly hat it was and have her movie with the Motherbox stingers at the end. Sandwich that with another Superman flick, MOS II, that introduced Deathstroke and Metallo while making Luthor (and i don’t have a problem with Jesse Eisenberg’s interpretation. In this day and age, of course Luthor would be Zuckerberg That just makes sense.) the mastermind behind all of this, culminating in him, with the help of the expert Deathstroke, discerning the identities of the Trinity. Set up for Phase two, ya dig? So now you release the MOS as Snyder envisioned, tweaking it ever so slightly into a Trinity movie and not just a Supes film. Kryptonians invade, forcing not only Superman to act but Wonder Woman and Batman, too. Working together, the latter two as the civilians Diana Price and Bruce Wayne so they get a front seat for how much destruction Supes has caused, they subdue subdue the Kryptonians and banish them and/or kill them. Supes can still kill Zod because you have two films establishing that he deosn’t want to do that, that his moral compass dictates that murder is never a thing. Having to kill Zod would shake his world and you can go into that existential Supes we saw in BvS while forcing Bruce to understand how threatening Kryptonians are and Wondy questioning in her banishment from the world of man is actually right.

Phase two Starts of with BvS ad it follows The Dark Knight rises scenario. Luthor pits Supes and Bats against each other because he knows exactly who they are t this point, probably Diana as well, and sets about to have the twi destroy each other. It can be established that he’s already gotten access to the Kryptonian ship and has been working on his “Doomsday Protocol was killed two years earlier or whatever. After being goaded into trying to kill Supes, Bats does his thing, more or less, how it’s seen in BvS without all that Martha bullsh*t. During their battle, Bruce and Clark come to terms and realize that neither really wants this battle and decide to go after the awaiting Luthor who activates Doomsday/Bizzaro. The two engage and, with the help of Wonder Woman, subdue the beast at the cost of Clark’s life. He dead. Bruce visits Luthor ins prision, at his invitation, and reveals that he was able to activate one of the Motherboxes two years ago and the entity on the other side told him about the Kryptonian history of conquest. He continues to explain that everything was a means to remove Superman from earth, because he believes it’s in the world’s best interest, so that their world wouldn't fall like the countless others. Since Luthor was locked away, Bruce is the only other person in the world with the means and will to continue his work to which Bruce agrees but decided to do it his own way.

Bruce’s nonchalant dismissal would infuriate Luthor even more and the seeds of The Legion of Doom have been sowed for future titles. Little did Luthor know, however, that it was Steppenwolf on the other side of that Motherbox trying to find a way back to earth in order to enslave it. He used Luthor to remove the greatest threat to his conquest, the Superman, and it worked. The earth is defenseless and Batman knows it. So he sets about to find cats with powers as a means to defend them from what’s coming. And now you move forward Witt the standalone Flash, Cyborg, and Aquaman films. Maybe a Wonder Woman sequel and then drop that first Justice League flick. It can basically be what we got now. which fits, for the most part, with what i would have established. SO, now, instead of having basically two book e films in your five film world, you have about 11 of varying popularity, in about 7 years. maybe 10. The point is, you’ve built something. Something good. Something compelling. Something substantial. Something worth coming back to, again and again.

You see how taking the time to craft a universe sets you up for spectacular success? You see how telling good stories can compel others to want to create better stories?  The MCU understands this. The Star Wars universe understands this. You can’t rush these things in an effort to cash-in or compete You need to go t your own pace and make sure the product is up to snuff. The DCEU didn’t do that. They rushed in with no plan or strategy and released sh*t. Why was Suicide Squad even on the docket? how does that film fit into the DCEU? There was literally no mention of it in Justice League and you’d think an attack by a thousand year old witch would be something cats would want to speak on. nope. The what was the point of it all? Sh*t’s whack son.

At the end of the day, no one trusts the DCEU aymore

Justice League failed because the DCEU is failing. People imply don’t trust WB to deliver stories on the same level of Marvel. The DCEU is looked at more as another Dark Universe, which is now defunct, rather than something with promise like the Star Wars universe or something established like the MCU. They’ve earned the reputation of shilling sh*t and that sticks. Cats want good cape flick. They want to see their heroes portrayed brilliantly. The want to go to a film that’s pretty, entertaining, and enriching. No one wants to watch that dark ass BvS. No one wants to see an out of context, somber ass Superman. Vats want the comradery of that Timmverse Justice League. Cats want to see their heroes represented in live action as well as they have been in their animated outings. The thing is, though, i don’t think anyone believes the DCEU can deliver that level of quality. I think everyone is tired of giving these cats chances. I liked Justice League a little bit. I thought the tone was a decent, if jarring, combination of levity and seriousness. In someone else’s hands, there is a great f*cking movie there. But, Snyder has his mits all over this thing and it shows. Bringing in Whedon to clean up was a stroke of genius but it was too little too late for JL. And, to be honest, it might be too little too late for the entire DCEU.

[smokeybrand]

We Can Be Heroes

So i took in Ragnarok a second time and even wrote an in depth review about it. I said i wanted to compare and contrast between JL, more because Marvel has released some solid films both directly from Marvel Studios and their franchised heroes to other studios, in particular Fox. Logan is the second greatest cape flick i have ever seen, after the Dark Knight. I don’t throw that distinction around lightly because TDK is one of the greatest films, overall, ever made and Logan can give it a run for it’s money any day. Outside of that flick, Homecoming was spectacular and so was Guardians. I have already gushed about Ragnarok and even Wonder Woman was on point. So why was Justice League so bad? Why did no one go to see it?

I’m not sating that Justice League is a flop. Of course not. It made a pretty penny. It had, like, a 96 million dollar opening last week. Cash money. The thing is, if i know the box office, that’s unsustainable. A good drop in the week two run is around 40 to 50 percent. I’m not sure what the week two drop was but, considering all of the cats i saw looking to check out Coco and the fact my screening of Ragnarok was full, i imagine it’s going to be pretty substantial. Probably high 50 to mid 60s which is not was Warner Bros. wants. That’d be terrible news. Considering it only made about 185 mil in the foreign markets over opening weekend, that mid 60percent is looking better and better. So how is it Marvel keeps knocking these things out of the park and DC keeps stumbling across the finish line? As a comic fan, Marvel Fanboy, and cinemaphile, i wanted to throw my two cents into the argument because i find it all very intriguing

DCEU Fatigue

There are cats talking about superhero fatigue. I’ve been hearing that thrown around a lot lately. I don’t think that’s accurate. There are too many of us millennials out here, of age, starting our own families, that are afflicted with that crazy childhood nostalgia because we’re all latchkey kids, particularly the older of us. Cats like me, born in the early to mid 80s, adore comic books and Saturday morning cartoons. We loved the escapism as the excess of greed and selfishness during the 80s tore our families apart. Among our “Oregon Trail” generation, we have some of the highest rates of divorce so escapism was real.  We threw ourselves into Nintendo, BTAS, and Marvel comics. We brought our younger siblings, those notorious and oft maligned by the media as the true “millennials”, those youngsters born in the 90s, into our world of comic book distraction, cartoon interference, and video game diversion. To see all of those heroes we followed as kids put up on the big screen with massive budgets and SFX spectacle is like catnip to us. The market is rife with prime demographics for these films and, as log as they’re good, there’s no stopping that machine. But that’s the overall problem.

Marvel has been doing this since 2008. They stumbled in a few outings (The two Hulk films, the first two Thor films, and to a lesser extent Iron Man 2 and Age of Ultron) but they have also shined brilliantly along the way while taking crazy risks. No one knew who the f*ck the Guardians of the Galaxy were or why Chris Pratt would even be cast in a superhero role but look; That first Guardians film is a classic and the second, even with all of it’s missteps, is a goddamn joy to watch. Pratt is a huge star now and people are looking to GOT to set that Cosmic Marvel tone. James Gunn’s visibility as a director has increased considerably, to the point that Taika Waititi took a little of their tone and levity into his own MCU outing, Ragnarok. And, again, i adored that flick. When Ultron came out and audiences reacted with mild tepidness, Marvel pulled Whedon and installed the Russos as the primary architects of MCU and look what happened. Cap 3 was ridiculous and literally every Marvel film after has scored in the 80s or 90s on Rotten Tomatoes. Not only did these cats helm arguable the best MCU film in Winter Soldier (the first Iron Man, i guess the first Avengers flick, and Homecoming might have something to say about that) but they were trusted with introducing the Marvel golden child, Spider-Man, in Civil War. and he was a goddamn hit! In my screening, people gave Pete a standing ovation. I cried manly tears when i saw him suit up. We have Black Panther on the horizon and the hype for that sh*t is explosive while Infinity war has been brewing for a decade. Marvel is coming up aces. The lowest rated film on Rotten tomatoes is The Incredible Hulk (see, them hulk flicks,man) and it’s at a 67 percent. Over almost a decade and 17 films, the MCU has an average tomatometer rating of about 83 percent.

The DCEU? different f*cking story. These cats are just the worst at this game, man. Their highest rated film is Wonder Woman. She’s sitting at a respectable 92 percent. To be honest, upon repeated viewing, i think it’s more a high 80s flick but still, for what it did with what ist had, i’m not made at the 92. Gal Gadot and Patty Jenkins crafted a heartfelt fairy tale that built up a legit female icon for girls and even boys to look at with admiration. I adore what this film meant on a social level and the fact it blew up the f*cking box office has movie execs standing at attention. Wonder Woman is the best character and overall experience to come out of this sh*tty DCEU. Everything else is trash. The next best reviewed film in the DCEU is Man of Steel, the first in the franchise, at 55 percent. That’s a far cry for the MCU’s initial outing of Iron Man at 94. My lady is a MASSIVE Supes fan and she HATED MOS. She said that wasn’t a Superman movie. She said it was a hodge-podge of nonsense. And it was. Sh*t didn’t get any better either. Since 2013, the DCEU has dropped 5 films, two of which rate less than 30 percent. their average tomatometer rating? 48.2 percent. I’ll be kind and round that up to 49 percent. Why would yo keep throwing money at a studio that ‘s dropping such awful movies? Justice League had it’s problems but i don’t think it’s 49 percent bad. I think audiences don’t trust Warner to their jobs. I think audiences are still burned by that 27 percent BvS debacle. I know they’re still reeling by that cluster f*ck of Suicide Squad. Essentially it’s fool me once, shame on you. Fool me three times, shame on me. Wonder Woman was really good but that’s because it’s more Marvel than not. But fool Me four times? Nah, breh. We learned our lesson. Cats are experiencing Superhero fatigue, we’re experiencing bad movie fatigue. We’re tired of the DCEU producing crap and don’t want to pay for another clusterf*ck. of nonsense.

No one trusts Zack Snyder because he’s awful at telling stories and DC was stupid to put him in charge of their cinematic universe to begin with

300 was dope but that movie lended itself to Snyder’s style of film making. If you’ve ever actually read Frank Miller’s 300 comic, you’d know that it’s all splash pages and action scenes. There’s very little substance in the book itself, just a bunch of cool looking sh*t. There’s no overarching narrative other than these 300 guys stood in there Persian’s way only to die fighting. That’s the narrative for 300. So, for a guy like Snyder who can’t craft a plot to get himself out of a wet paper bag, this was a tale designed for him. All that slow-mo and cg blood was just cool sh*t to see, Snyder is a master at crafting cool looking scenes to see and that 300 flick of his was cool to see Terrible film overall (non existent plot, terribly cheesy dialogue, anti climactic ending) but it was dope to see. This is where, i think, people mistook Snyder’s ability to craft a dope ass action scene for an ability to actually tell a story. People loved 300. It made 456 mil on a 60 mil budget. Critically, it sits at a 60 percent, critically and an 89 percent audience rating. Surprise-Surprise, cool looking sh*t based on cool looking sh*t is popular among the ignorant masses but falls short with people who actually engage cinema on more levels than just cool looking sh*t. So what happens when you give Snyder a heavy plot and meticulously crafted narrative to adapt to film? you get his take on Watchmen.

One of the greatest tales ever written in comic form was Watchmen. Alan Moore crafted a magnum ops of a tale and st it on the backdrop of cold war paranoia. This thing is visceral. This thing is sobering. This thing is real. It peels back the layers of our supposed society and asks hard questions about what it means to be human. So, taking this commentary rick narrative in to account, WB decided to give it to an asshole who couldn’t recognize subtext if it shoved it’s massive cock down his throat in Zack Snyder. Yes, Watchmen is pretty but does it do it’s job as an adaption? F*ck no. None of that gritty, hard question asking, almost malevolent intent at holding society hostage for it’s nonsense. None of it. Instead, we get, like, Watchmen lite. No character development. No social commentary. Not even a period correct piece. Watchmen take place in the 80s. Why do i feel like it’s present day?? Because Zack Snyder is the worst at movies. This thing made 185 mil on a 130 mil budget and sits at a 65 percent  (which, i think, is Snyder’s highest critically rated film, ever) on Tomatoes. The audience score was about 71 percent, a significant drop from his last outing with 300. This is Snyder trying to create an actual movie, trying to craft a proper narrative and he lost about 17 percent of his audience,according to Rotten Tomatoes. So WB tripled down on this asshat and gave him a massive budget to do whatever the f*ck he anted with it and we got Sucker Punch. Nd OH BOY, is THAT film problematic.

So Sucker Punch was WB giving Zack Snyder carte blanche and about 8 mil to do whatever he wanted. And this mess of a rape fantasy is what we got. There are just so many thematic, social, and personal problems that ween through it’s terrible, terrible, film. You can see that Snyder hates women or, at least, thinks ridiculously less of the with all of the rampant sexism in this film. You can tell he has no idea how to actually cut a film with that lack of coherency. You can tell he has no idea how to develop characters beyond the literal and shallow tropes that are present in even the most mundane of cinema. This sh*t is a glorified, multi-million dollar, student film based on a fanfiction Snyder wrote when he was 14 years old and barely understood why he got boner or why the popular cheerleader didn’t look his way. Sucker Punch is trash. Sexist, problematic, poorly executed, wildly rapey, trash. And both the audience and critics understood that. It’s sitting at a 47 percent audience rating and a 23 percent critic rating on Tomatoes. No one liked this film. No one went to see it. It only made 89 mil on an 82 mil budget. Sucker Punch proves that Snyder is a bad filmmaker and a crackpot story teller. So WB puts him in charge of one of their most precious and profitable franchises in Superman?

This Zack Snyder is a proven loser and you give him Superman? You give him one of the most recognizable icons in the world and tell him to create a new vision that will be the linchpin of an entire cinematic world to rival the now full steam MCU? Based on 300, Watchmen, and Sucker Punch? Literally all of his films have shown woeful diminished returns but this is the guy you throw the DCEU to, after coming off the Dark Knight Trilogy? F*cking Nolan got you an Oscar on the back of Ledger’s performance as the Joker and instead of giving the reigns of the DCEU to a guy with that sort of vision, you give it to Snyder who can only craft “cool looking sh*t”? really? On top of that, you force him to bring to life a David S. Goyer script, the co-author and co-creator of that wildly successful Dark Knight trilogy, and expect Snyder to execute like Nolan did? Really? Who thought this was a good idea and why?? Where was the guy at the top to say “No”? Which brings me to my next point...

The DCEU needs a guy like Kevin Feige or Kathleen Kennedy to guide their universe and not rely so much on filmakers to execute a vision. 

The DCEU needs a Feige to reign this sh*t in. I hear WB touting that a cinematic universe should be helmed by film makers or whatever and they’re tight. But there also needs to be a uniform vision. Someone needs to sit up top to guide the ship. Someone removed from the film making process but still knows a good narrative when he sees it. Someone who understand the business side of movies while understanding what’s necessary to create a compelling film. The DCEU needs a proper producer to sit on top of all of these movie directors and force them to essentially create within the formula. The MCU does that and look at their success. Te Star Wars universe is doing that and look at their success. Hell, the Star Wars universe is a perfect example of the same issues the DCEU is having right now.

Look at the original trilogy, Episodes IV to VI. Lucas was sitting on top, even directed the first, but stepped aside to let actual film makers craft an actual narrative after A New Hope. What did we get? F*cking classics. The Empire Strike Back is one of the greatest films ever made and sits on a very short list with The Dark Knight and The Godfather Part II as sequels better than their predecessors. Guess what happened when Lucas decided to make the Prequels himself? Yeah. George Lucas is that visionary with a lot of ideas but lacks the ability to execute them properly. He’s a lot like Zack Snyder in that way and the Prequel trilogy showed that to the world. Disney took those mistakes to heart and basically built a universe system based on the success they’ve had with the MCU and guess what? two movies in, it’s paying off. The Force Awakens and Rogue one are sitting at an average of 89 percent critic rating on Rotten tomatoes. Average. the audience rating is about 88 percent. People love these films and The Last Jedi looks to be a home run as well. They have so much confidence in Rian Johnson, they gave that cat a trilogy to develop on his own. Bet, though, that Kathleen Kennedy is going to be right there, adding her input and making sure it follows that path she has set for the future of the Star War universe. Giving the film makers themselves the reins to the entire universe is a little like letting the patients run the asylum ad the DCEU is worse off for it.

The DCEU should have followed Marvel’s blue print and taken it’s time to flesh out the principal players in their massive team up instead of copping-out with BvS as basically it’s second film into a fledgling franchise

This one, i think, is the biggest reason the DCEU is sh*t. Marvel took it’s time to execute and create a world. We had a Hulk film, two Iron Man flicks, a Thor outing, and a Cap flick before we even got to the Avengers. We knew the character. We loved the universe created. We were invested when Loki snatched the Tesseract. We were five movies into a universe, five decent movies into a world, before cats came together to face off against a rogue god and his alien army. Sure, there were course corrections. Thor was adjusted a bit and Ruffalo was recast as The Hulk but it worked. We go Nat in Iron Man 2 and Clint in Thor. And the Avengers was good. I don’t think it was Dark Knight good but it’s still pretty widely accepted as the superior film for some reason. Marvel took the time to build something. They took the time to establish something. They built up their characters and made sure audiences knew exactly ho they were and what they were about before they even attempted that team up flick. Everything felt organic. The growth felt earned. The DCEU did not go this rout. The y, instead, rushed out BvS instead of MOS II and basically sh*t all over the good will they had with audiences.

BvS should have stuck to one story and carried that over but it didn’t. t was The Dark Knight Returns and The Death of Superman with hints of For All Seasons thrown in just because and none of it meshed. BvS should have bee the climax to a DCEU phase one. Start of with a character driven story about Lois Lane investigating “The Blur” which leads her to the discovery of Superman or whatever. maybe have a token villain or some sort of world cataclysm that needed addressing just to introduced boy scout Supes and call it a day. No Krpytonians yet, maybe have them as the end credit stinger or something. We should have had a Wonder Woman movie before BvS but after SUpes, so, maybe the second one out? And then a throwback Batman outing that established his vigilantism in the past. I would have adapted that excellent Year One story or The Long Halloween, crafted a tale of mystery and noir, Batman’s strengths, as a prequel to the universe it’s self. Wonder Woman could have been exactly hat it was and have her movie with the Motherbox stingers at the end. Sandwich that with another Superman flick, MOS II, that introduced Deathstroke and Metallo while making Luthor (and i don’t have a problem with Jesse Eisenberg’s interpretation. In this day and age, of course Luthor would be Zuckerberg That just makes sense.) the mastermind behind all of this, culminating in him, with the help of the expert Deathstroke, discerning the identities of the Trinity. Set up for Phase two, ya dig? So now you release the MOS as Snyder envisioned, tweaking it ever so slightly into a Trinity movie and not just a Supes film. Kryptonians invade, forcing not only Superman to act but Wonder Woman and Batman, too. Working together, the latter two as the civilians Diana Price and Bruce Wayne so they get a front seat for how much destruction Supes has caused, they subdue subdue the Kryptonians and banish them and/or kill them. Supes can still kill Zod because you have two films establishing that he deosn’t want to do that, that his moral compass dictates that murder is never a thing. Having to kill Zod would shake his world and you can go into that existential Supes we saw in BvS while forcing Bruce to understand how threatening Kryptonians are and Wondy questioning in her banishment from the world of man is actually right.

Phase two Starts of with BvS ad it follows The Dark Knight rises scenario. Luthor pits Supes and Bats against each other because he knows exactly who they are t this point, probably Diana as well, and sets about to have the twi destroy each other. It can be established that he’s already gotten access to the Kryptonian ship and has been working on his “Doomsday Protocol was killed two years earlier or whatever. After being goaded into trying to kill Supes, Bats does his thing, more or less, how it’s seen in BvS without all that Martha bullsh*t. During their battle, Bruce and Clark come to terms and realize that neither really wants this battle and decide to go after the awaiting Luthor who activates Doomsday/Bizzaro. The two engage and, with the help of Wonder Woman, subdue the beast at the cost of Clark’s life. He dead. Bruce visits Luthor ins prision, at his invitation, and reveals that he was able to activate one of the Motherboxes two years ago and the entity on the other side told him about the Kryptonian history of conquest. He continues to explain that everything was a means to remove Superman from earth, because he believes it’s in the world’s best interest, so that their world wouldn't fall like the countless others. Since Luthor was locked away, Bruce is the only other person in the world with the means and will to continue his work to which Bruce agrees but decided to do it his own way.

Bruce’s nonchalant dismissal would infuriate Luthor even more and the seeds of The Legion of Doom have been sowed for future titles. Little did Luthor know, however, that it was Steppenwolf on the other side of that Motherbox trying to find a way back to earth in order to enslave it. He used Luthor to remove the greatest threat to his conquest, the Superman, and it worked. The earth is defenseless and Batman knows it. So he sets about to find cats with powers as a means to defend them from what’s coming. And now you move forward Witt the standalone Flash, Cyborg, and Aquaman films. Maybe a Wonder Woman sequel and then drop that first Justice League flick. It can basically be what we got now. which fits, for the most part, with what i would have established. SO, now, instead of having basically two book e films in your five film world, you have about 11 of varying popularity, in about 7 years. maybe 10. The point is, you’ve built something. Something good. Something compelling. Something substantial. Something worth coming back to, again and again.

You see how taking the time to craft a universe sets you up for spectacular success? You see how telling good stories can compel others to want to create better stories?  The MCU understands this. The Star Wars universe understands this. You can’t rush these things in an effort to cash-in or compete You need to go t your own pace and make sure the product is up to snuff. The DCEU didn’t do that. They rushed in with no plan or strategy and released sh*t. Why was Suicide Squad even on the docket? how does that film fit into the DCEU? There was literally no mention of it in Justice League and you’d think an attack by a thousand year old witch would be something cats would want to speak on. nope. The what was the point of it all? Sh*t’s whack son.

At the end of the day, no one trusts the DCEU aymore

Justice League failed because the DCEU is failing. People imply don’t trust WB to deliver stories on the same level of Marvel. The DCEU is looked at more as another Dark Universe, which is now defunct, rather than something with promise like the Star Wars universe or something established like the MCU. They’ve earned the reputation of shilling sh*t and that sticks. Cats want good cape flick. They want to see their heroes portrayed brilliantly. The want to go to a film that’s pretty, entertaining, and enriching. No one wants to watch that dark ass BvS. No one wants to see an out of context, somber ass Superman. Vats want the comradery of that Timmverse Justice League. Cats want to see their heroes represented in live action as well as they have been in their animated outings. The thing is, though, i don’t think anyone believes the DCEU can deliver that level of quality. I think everyone is tired of giving these cats chances. I liked Justice League a little bit. I thought the tone was a decent, if jarring, combination of levity and seriousness. In someone else’s hands, there is a great f*cking movie there. But, Snyder has his mits all over this thing and it shows. Bringing in Whedon to clean up was a stroke of genius but it was too little too late for JL. And, to be honest, it might be too little too late for the entire DCEU.

[janicefosse]

Writing Lives: Mica Scotti Kole

I attended the Chicago Writers Conference in 2015. It was my first conference ever, and I was both excited and terrified. Not being a particularly social person, the idea of spending three days mingling with and talking to total strangers with no familiar friends or my husband to hide behind was almost enough to prevent me from attending the conference.  But I was determined to enter the writing world, and so I stepped boldly into an unfamiliar bar in downtown Chicago on Friday night for the first mixer of the conference.

Throwing caution to the wind (and ignoring the gurgles of terror in my stomach), I walked up to the first friendly face I saw and said hello. That face belonged to the fantastic Mica Scotti Kole, and I am so glad that I was able to overcome my fears and meet such a fantastic person.

If you don’t know Mica, you’re missing not only a super cool person and a talented writer, but also an invaluable resource for other writers. She is the face behind Free Writing Events, aka @Writevent on Twitter, the clearinghouse for all free writing events on the Internet. Her website has not only the same calendar of free writing events, but also a plethora of other writing resources, from agent lists to conference recaps, writing advice, and more.

She is also the founder of Beta Frank, the “super-affordable editing service where the author sets the price and duration of the services – not the editor.” I had her go over my manuscript before I began querying and now I have an agent. Her invaluable insights and in-depth notes were instrumental in getting my book into its best possible shape, and I would recommend her to anyone looking for a high quality editor (she should really be charging at least triple what she charges – just saying). I decided to kick off my interview series with a writer, editor, and person that I admire and I’m proud to call friend. So, without any further ado, here is my interview with Mica.

The fabulous Mica Scotti Kole!

JF: Tell us how you got started in writing - what inspired you early on, what inspires you today, etc.

MK: When I was little, I used to play with Duplos - like giant Legos with animals - and write stories about the animals' adventures. I just unearthed one of these "books" recently while unpacking for a new house. The animals in my "Miracle Zoo" made hover-cars out of coconut juice. I'm pretty sure I was doomed to write fantasy from the very beginning.

JF: How did you become the queen of writing events?

MK: Aw, thanks! Well, when I first started Twitter, I discovered hashtag games like #1linewed and events like #PitMad, which were fun writing challenges and incredible networking opportunities that I had never heard of before... meaning that piles of other writers had never heard of them, either. I saw a need, and I started filling it, and the response was so stellar that I just kept going, widening my promotions to any events that were free and useful for writers. I'm highly organizational, so the resulting @writevent turned out to be pretty cool.

JF: Name one book that has influenced you in life, as a writer, etc.

MK: I always say The Golden Compass. I remember walking into a giant library, having no idea what to do, and asking a librarian. She gave me that book of the thousands available, and I was sold on fantasy forever... the accompanying His Dark Materials trilogy has it all: diversity, religious questioning, talking animals, multiple dimensions, death, and irreconcilable heartbreak. The Golden Compass taught me that an imaginary world doesn't need to be contained. It can be as big as you want it to be. I dislike writing contemporary to this day!

JF: What is your daily writing routine like? Do you have any particular rituals, must-haves, etc?

MK: I'm one of those one-track-mind people. I'll kick out 20,000 words in a few days, then veer off into another project and forget to write for a week. But my daily ritual involves cereal, loose-leaf black tea, and consuming some type of media: books, anime, or often the Daily Show with Trevor Noah. It takes me an hour at least to get through this ritual because that's how long it takes me to finish my tea (yes, it gets cold). Then I open my laptop, pull up Word, and dive in.

JF: How much research do you do for a writing project?

MK: None during the first draft, except when naming characters or the occasional "What type of feather is at the tip of the wing?" question. I do most of my research in revisions, with a special eye for the diversity-related research. But I do have an aversion to general research due to a decade of writing all A+ papers in every English class ever. I think some part of me believes I've paid my dues. That is not a good thing, lol.

JF: Are you a planner, a pantser, or a plantster?

MK: Depends on the project, but I think that inevitably we all become plantsters in the end - a hybrid. I'll either outline a book and end up down a rabbit hole, or I'll run down a rabbit hole and end up plotting my way out. I leaned primarily toward plotting early on, though, and I do recommend that. Plotting gives you a feel for pacing and structure that pantsing doesn't. You can learn a great deal about writing from plotting, but pantsing mostly just teaches you how to revise!

JF: You’ve written characters from underrepresented groups - please elaborate on the importance of that and what challenges you’ve faced writing these characters.

MK: I could say SO MUCH about this, but will try to limit myself. To start: writing diverse characters terrifies me. So many authors, either white/cis/nonreligious like myself or themselves diverse, have faced incredible vitriol for trying to write diverse characters. The fear that trying to elevate other voices might actually ruin my career - and even my life - is real. The fact is that mistakes will be made if one writes diversity, and writers will be hated for writing diversity no matter what they do. You can't please everyone, and you can only do your best. That said, one's "best" must involve sensitivity readers, research, and humility. Frankly I have said and done insensitive things without any idea I was doing it - and to learn my own failings and misconceptions, and have to apologize, is both painful and important. In addition, #ownvoices books must be elevated above non-#ownvoices books. I cannot possibly write about a transgender woman the way a transgender woman can write about herself, and I need to recognize that. All that said, despite the hate campaigns and the social justice warriors/bullies and all the other risks, if white/cis writers don't at least try for the most basic of inclusion, then our literature will be whitewashed. And white is the most boring color.

JF: What would you suggest as an essential bit of reading for aspiring writers?

MK: The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho will inspire you to chase what matters. This is my favorite book, and no, it's not a book that tells you how to write. For better or worse, I don't believe those kinds of books have ever helped me personally. Although if you're fresh to the writing scene, Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott is a must-read, and absolutely hilarious to boot. She'll warn you about all those things you need warnings for...

JF: What is the most useful writing advice you’ve ever received? The most destructive?

MK: Useful? To structure according to the Hero's Journey (or the 3-Act Structure, whatever works). This is such a game-changer and has helped me write better first drafts and get a keener eye for story... although, as I said, over time plotting may become more instinctive. And the most destructive advice, for me, was specific advice from an agent on how to redo my opening. The advice itself wasn't bad, but taking her word as gospel caused my opening to founder for ages. To that end, I'd advise second opinions if a change doesn't sound like it would work for you... remember, you know your book better than anyone else! But do pay attention if the second opinion matches up!

JF: The publishing world is a strange one right now - what do you see for the future of publishing in your genre?

MK: I see more diversity. They're afraid, now, to take these books on... but those that have succeeded, have done so very well. And as much as people love the same old tropes, a blurb about a police shooting or a Muslim teen catches the eye and sets the book apart more than "oh look, another clumsy female protagonist in a love triangle." Publishers want a hook, and that's the key: do you have a hook? I also see a shift toward YA over adult books in most genres. Virtual Reality storytelling isn't too far off, either.

JF: What do you suck at?

MK: Humor. At least, putting humor into things. I lean toward dark stories, and I need to work on the comic relief. I also struggle with getting the reader to connect to the main character early on. I work much harder on voice than I used to, and it still seems like it isn't working - but I have improved, and will continue to do so. Like Lisa Scottoline said about writing, "You never hit your stride."

Check out Mica on Twitter: @MicaScottiKole

Be sure to follow Free Writing Events: @Writevent

Mica Scotti Kole’s website: Micascottikole.com

Beta Frank Editing Services: Beta Frank

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