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mst3kproject · 7 years

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1004: Future War

There are movies that over-reach themselves, and then there's Future War.

Some opening titles tell us that time-travelling cyborgs occasionally drop in to our planet to harvest humans as slaves (because the cyborgs have no thumbs) and dinosaurs as trackers (because somebody wanted dinosaurs in their movie). One slave has escaped to Earth, where he successfully fights off the cyborgs and dinosaurs only to be ignominiously run down by a nun in a station wagon. She takes him to a halfway house to recover, but the dinosaurs follow them there, and Sister Anne is forced to call on her gang connections to protect her new friend from the extraterrestrial manhunters.

My god, it's like a twelve-year-old rented Jurassic Park and The Terminator in the same evening, watched them while drinking his parents' liquor, and decided to make a movie. Somebody really should have objected that you can't film a sci-fi epic with cyborgs and dinosaurs when all you have is seventeen dollars and a video camera. When a movie can't possibly realize its ambitions but tries anyway, I often find that entertaining in itself, but Future War aims just a little too high, and falls just a little too short. It passes 'bad', speeds right through 'so bad it's good', and enters the wasteland beyond.

Future War does at least tell us upfront what it's about: its theme is faith. Sister Anne's story is basically a tale of redemption. She has made mistakes that she cannot undo: her murdered friend can never come back, and her criminal record will follow her throughout her life. She has turned to the church because God is supposed to be infinitely forgiving – but her real problem is that she cannot forgive herself. She therefore finds herself asking all the old questions about the Christian universe. How can God be good when the world is such a horrible place? How can rape and murder, war and starvation, be part of a loving deity's plan? When we meet her, she is on the verge of rejecting the church altogether, as it has not brought her the peace she sought.

Then she meets the escaped slave, whom the credits simply call Runaway. He is seeking not redemption, but freedom, to make his own choices and use his own abilities to do what he wants. Those abilities are meager, limited to what any human being could learn to do with his or her body, but the point is that he gets to choose how to direct them. He has latched on to one line from the Bible as his inspiration: John 15:13, greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends; he wants to do things out of love, not because he's following orders. Through him, Anne comes to understand that her religious devotion should not be about whether she understands why the world is the way it is (Isaiah 55:8) or about whether she can forgive herself for her past – it's about what she can do for others, to try to make this imperfect world a little better. She is then able to turn the most shameful parts of her past, her connections with the gangs and drug lords, into a weapon to fight the invaders.

This actually sounds like a fairly powerful arc for a piece of fiction. It's also more feminist than it may at first appear. Sister Anne's past, her current crisis, and her decisions are all her own, and the other characters repeatedly emphasize this. The men at the halfway house helped her at her lowest, but they tell her they cannot choose her future for her. Runaway comes into her life not with solutions to her problems, but as part of a series of events that help her understand how her approach to those problems has been flawed. He is an inspiration to her search for answers, rather than an answer in himself. The movie even passes the Bechdel Test, as Sister Anne and her mother superior talk about her crisis of faith.

It's really pretty astonishing to realize that Future War, of all things, contains the seeds of a good movie. A film about an agnostic nun and an escaped slave helping each other find themselves sounds like Oscar bait. It just needs the right writers. Too bad Future War has only David Huey and Dom Magwali. They're the ones credited for coming up with the story and writing the script, so they're the ones to blame for deciding this story about faith, redemption, and good works needed cyborgs and dinosaurs in it.

That was really not a good decision. I'm not saying a movie with cyborgs and dinosaurs couldn't have been an entertaining or even meaningful movie in the right hands, but this movie was absolutely ruined by them, because the most obvious feature of Future War is how desperately cheap it is. They had so little money they filmed the entire thing on a single camera. How do I know that? Well, there's that scene in which we see a guy who's supposed to be filming a news report. If they'd had a second camera on the set, they surely would have used it as a prop in this shot, but they didn't. They taped a spare lens to a cardboard box and pretended that was a camera. It's kind of hilarious, except it's also kind of sad. You laugh as you cry tears of pity for these poor souls. With no budget for a second camera, how were they ever going to manage halfway-convincing cyborgs and dinosaurs? The answer, of course, is that they didn't.

Special effects in a movie don't have to be perfect. Suspension of disbelief is more powerful than I think Hollywood often gives it credit for, and a special effect with seams around the edges needn't ruin a movie. Think of Teenagers from Outer Space and its focusing disintegrator ray. The doctor's office skeleton they use to represent the victims doesn't look real for a moment but it's good enough. It tells you what happened and it isn't so terrible that you dwell on it at the expense of the story. Effects can even get worse than that and still make the movie entertaining – Teenagers from Outer Space also had a lobster for its monster, but that was so stupid it was fun in its own right.

The dinosaurs in Future War fall yet further down the suck scale. They're too crappy to add anything to the movie. Even as a joke, they quickly wear thin. Several shots are literally a hand puppet being waved in front of the camera – the, uh, 'film-makers', I guess, put it closer than the actors to make it look bigger, but it never works. The full-body puppets they use in other scenes are almost kind of okay as long as they aren't moving, but as soon as they're supposed to do anything you realize they're as rubbery and immobile as those animatronic ones you might see at the zoo in the summer. Their knees don't bend. There's a bit where a dinosaur supposedly falls into a pit, and they literally just pushed the puppet in. It bounces off the wall on the way down.

The movie can't decide how big the dinosaurs are. Sometimes they're huge and sometimes they're small enough to fit in your carry-on luggage. Sister Anne's narration does note that they come in various shapes and sizes, but that doesn't work as an explanation when an individual dinosaur appears to change size with the camera angle. The one that breaks open the halfway house's window seems like it's supposed to be enormous when we're looking from behind it, and about as big as a German shepherd when we're inside the room.

The cyborgs aren't great either. They look kind of like members of an underfunded 80s metal band, but they're better than the dinosaurs. A big part of the reason the dinosaurs suck so terribly is that the viewer quickly realizes they aren't even necessary. The cyborgs, okay, sure. Runaway is supposed to have escaped from time-travelling aliens or maybe humans from the future (the script cannot decide), and the cyborgs could represent either. The dinosaurs, however, are 'trackers'. There is absolutely no reason why they needed dinosaurs in this role. Ordinary dogs, perhaps with a few cardboard contraptions to represent cybernetic enhancements, would have done just fine and been way more believable.

Then again, the dinosaurs also kind of make the movie. A bad movie about a nun, a runaway slave, and cyborgs from space would just have been a bad movie. A bad movie about a nun, a runaway slave, cyborgs from space, and dinosaurs crosses some sort of line where people like me (and the Best Brains) sit up and notice. It goes past “that sounds so bad” into “that sounds so bad I need to see it”. The result is deeply disappointing but by then it's too late. Dinosaurs aren't really necessary to this, either, though. Zombies or ninjas would have the same effect, be way cheaper, and look much better on screen with the budget they had.

What this movie really needed was for somebody to say no. No, you guys. We can't do this – we don't even have enough money for a second camera, we can't possibly have cyborgs and dinosaurs in this movie. Can we scale it back a bit? Apparently nobody involved had the common sense to say that, and as a result, the movie is a dirt-cheap disaster. Even as an MST3K episode, it's at best sort of amusing... it never really reaches any heights because the movie doesn't offer them any kind of foundation to build on. It just sucks.

The police captain in Future War is named Captain Polaris, which sounds like a second-string Canadian superhero. That would have made for a better movie, too.

#mst3k #reviews #future war #90s #dinosaurs make everything better

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man-creates-dinosaurs · 7 years

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ESSAY: Are the ALIEN Films Dinosaur Movies?

NOTE: This essay contains spoilers for the film ALIEN: COVENANT (2017, Dir. Ridley Scott)

At first glance it’s a question that appears to be a total non sequitur. After eight films and countless comics, novels and video games there has never once been any indication that the Xenomorphs – the genetically engineered, black skinned, bio-mechanical, shape-shifting “perfect organisms” at the heart of the ALIEN franchise - are dinosaurs, let alone a product of terran evolution. Even the Xenomorphs’ most direct literary antecedent, the Coeurl from A. E. van Vogt’s 1939 short-story “Black Destroyer,” is decidedly mammalian – feline to be precise – in nature.

Nevertheless these facts apparently were not enough to give scholar W.J.T. Mitchell pause while writing his groundbreaking cultural study of dinosaurs, The Last Dinosaur Book (University of Chicago Press, 1998), in which he posits that…

“Ridley Scott’s ALIEN films are an exception to this rule in their adherence to the most pessimistic logic of dinotopia. The initial discovery of the petrified alien creature is presented as a paleontological find. The space travelers descend into the fossilized belly of an ancient subterranean dragon, a vaulted, cavernous labyrinth supported by enormous ribs. Their presence revives the dormant eggs waiting in the giant womb, and unleashes the rebirth of a monster whose blood is not merely cold, but composed of metal-eating acid. The reborn monsters are ‘body-snatchers’ who breed by using human bodies as temporary wombs until they are ready for their ghastly and deadly ‘birth.’ The monsters are regarded as a potentially valuable military technology by the intergalactic corporation financing the expedition. The alien, it becomes clear, is actually the ‘monstrous double’ of the very corporate state that wants to exploit its power.” (p. 38-39)

When Mitchell uses the term “dinotopia” he is not referring to the acclaimed series of illustrated novels by writer/artist James Gurney. Rather he means any fictive world in which dinosaurs and humans are imagined as coexisting. The “rule” of such imaginary realms, which Mitchell observes here, is the often inherently violent conflict for survival which dinosaurs and humans appear to be perpetually engaged in. Moreover, in most instances it is the humans who emerge triumphant: “Dinotopia seems to require a happy ending for mammals, no matter how arbitrary.” (p. 38) The ALIEN movies then are an exception to this rule in that the human characters always loose. Oh true, there may occasionally be survivors of encounters with the Xenomorphs, but as was the case with the series’ early protagonist Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) survival is no guarantee of a happy ending.*

But even if this is true, it is an idea still predicated on the notion that the ALIEN movies are somehow dinosaur films. How could this be? The screenplay for the original ALIEN (1979, Dir. Ridley Scott) was written by screenwriter and director Dan O’Bannon (1946-2009) who openly acknowledged on multiple occasions that he owed the idea for ALIEN to a number of different cinematic, sequential and literary sources; one of the most significant film influences being the 1958 sci-fi film IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE (Dir. Edward L. Cahn) about a reptilian humanoid extraterrestrial that sneaks adored an Earth bound spaceship departing from Mars and subsequently begins picking off the human crew one by one until they can eventually blast it out the airlock (Valaquen).

But while ALIEN may borrow IT!’s narrative structure, the film’s thematic elements come from none other than American horror icon H.P. Lovecraft. O’Bannon was a huge devotee of Lovecraft and even wrote and directed several films based on Lovecraft’s stories with ALIEN owning much of its affect to Lovecraft’s seminal 1936 novella At the Mountains of Madness about an Antarctic expedition lead by a team of paleontologists/geologists who subsequently stumble upon the ruins of a prehistoric alien city buried in the ice. Exploration of the city leads to the shocking discovery that these aliens were probably responsible for the creation of human life and the horrifying revelation that the synthetic shape-shipping monsters, called Shoggoths, which did them in are still alive and on the prowl. Of all the films in the ALIEN series it is PROMETHEUS (2012, Dir. Ridley Scott) which makes the greatest use of the themes of “cosmic horror” found in Lovecraft’s novella (McWilliam, 531-545), but nearly all the films – even 2004’s ALIEN VS. PREDATOR (Dir. Paul W.S. Anderson) – owes a slight debt to this story.

As maybe evident from the occupation of the protagonists, Lovecraft scholars are largely in agreement that H.P.’s primary influence for writing Mountains was his reading of contemporary paleo-fiction beginning with Katherine Metcalf Roof’s now painfully obscure 1930 short-story “A Million Years After” about a revivified dinosaur egg (Joshi and Schultz, 11) as well as classic Edgar Rice Burroughs’ works including 1914’s At the Earth’s Core (Fulwiler, 64) and 1918’s The Land that Time Forgot (Debus, 79), as well as John Tain’s 1929 novella The Greatest Adventure about an Antarctic expedition which discovers a lost world of mutant dinosaurs created by an ancient technologically advance race (Price, 141 & Debus, 77-78). As in Lovecraft’s Mountains, the scientists in Tain’s novella discover that the ancient race which created the mutant dinosaurs ultimately wiped themselves out when their experiments lead to the cultivation a deadly parasitic spore – a plot point which leads us back around to latest installment in the ALIEN franchise; ALIEN: COVENANT.

Considering this lineage it is now possible to draw a line directly linking the ALIEN movies to paleo-fiction thus further legitimizing Mitchell’s claim. While the fact remains that the Xenomorphs are not dinosaurs in even the loosest sense of the term, it is possible to argue that they are still influenced by the kind of stories we tend to tell about dinosaurs.

On this latter point I am reminded of Joshua Bellin’s provocative book Framing Monsters (Southern Illinois University Press, 2005) which argues that the ALIEN and JURASSIC PARK film series both play off American cultural anxieties concerning the fear of infertility among the ‘right’ kind of people (i.e. white, patriarchal, heterosexual, married couples) in the face of the illicit and unregulated explosion of offspring among the ‘wrong’ kind of people whether that be “clever [LGBTQ] girls” who have figured out how to reproduce in a “single sex environment” as in JURASSIC PARK (1993, Dir. Steven Spielberg) or the black-skinned “super-predators” of ALIENS (1986, Dir. James Cameron) ruled over by their matriarchal Queen who Bellin sees as an embodiment of WASP boggart that is the unwed African-American welfare mother (Bellin, 106-136).

Whether one agrees with Bellin’s analysis or not depends on how convincing one finds his arguments in which case I would encourage those interested to seek out his book, but personally I do find them convincing insofar that I see both the ALIEN and JURASSIC PARK franchises as promoting a narrative which celebrates the archetype of the hetero-normative nuclear family while figuratively and literally demonizing – be those demons dinosaurs or extraterrestrials – those who by choice or circumstance do not wish to confine their future to the American dream of a married life in which the husband works and the wife remains in their white picket fenced home with their two kids and a dog. Indeed, those who reject such a lifestyle are either naïve workaholics – such as Claire Dearing of JURASSIC WORLD (2015, Dir. Colin Trevorrow) – who only need to be shown the folly of their ways and given the opportunity to redeem themselves by accepting the role of foster-mother to the children whose lives their refusal to be responsible parents has imperiled, OR they are mad scientists who, in an almost textbook example of the feminist interpretation of the myth of Frankenstein, have decided to try and take the process of baby-making into their own hands and as a result created something unnatural and monstrous.

This once again leads back around to the new film ALIEN: COVENANT which pushes this latter idea to the furthest limits it has ever been since James Whales’ classic BRIDE OF FRANKENSTIEN (1935), with its revelation that the Xenomorphs are the creation of PROMETHEUS’s sociopathic, sexually frustrated and now possibly gay (or at least bi) android David who has given rise to such horrors as a byproduct of his angst over his inability to [pro]create.

As Mitchell noted it does appear that, in the end, the alien – and dinosaur – are indeed actually the “monstrous double” of the very systems of social indoctrination and control which surround our everyday lives. And even more troubling, according to the ALIEN films, they’re winning.

SOURCES

Bellin, Joshua. Framing Monsters (Southern Illinois University Press, 2005)

Debus, Allen A. Dinosaurs Ever Evolving (McFarland Press, 2016)

Fulwiler, William. “E.R.B. and H.P.L.” in Black Forbidden Things, Edited by Robert M. Price (Starmont House, 1992)

Joshi, S.T. and David E. Schultz. An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia (Hippocampus Press, 2004)

McWilliam, David. “Beyond the Mountains of Madness: Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror and Posthuman Creationism in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus (2012)” in the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts Vol. 26, Iss. 3 (Idaho State University, 2015)

Mitchell, W.J.T. The Last Dinosaur Book (University of Chicago Press, 1998)

Price, Robert M. “About The Greatest Adventure” in The Antarktos Cycle 2nd Ed., Edited by Robert M. Price (Chaosium Inc., 2006) Valaquen, “Alien and its Antecedents” (Feb 26, 2015) at Strange Shapes: https://alienseries.wordpress.com/2015/02/26/alien-and-its-antecedents/

* The ALIEN films are particularly notorious for ending on what seems to be a positive note only to pull the rug out from under the characters in the sequel. ALIEN ends with Ripley seemingly having survived her encounter with a Xenomorph only for the sequel, ALIENS, to reveal that she has been in hypersleep for 57-years with everyone she’s ever known and loved having died. ALIENS then ends with Ripley being granted a surrogate family in the form of Newt and Hicks only for ALIEN3 to open with the revelation that Newt and Hicks were killed while in hypersleep. PROMETHUS likewise seems to end on a somewhat positive note with Shaw having survived and it is only in ALIEN: COVENANT that we learn that Shaw was subsequently murdered and experimented on by David. COVENANT actually breaks with tradition by ending on an overt downer; it is clear in the film’s closing moments that Dany and everyone else onboard the Covenant is doomed.

#alien #alien covenant #prometheus #aliens #alien 3 #xenomorph #ridley scott #wjt mitchell #h.p. lovecraft #lovecraftian #at the mountains of madness #edgar rice burroughs #jurassic park #jurassic world #dan o'bannon #it! terror from beyond space #dinosaurs #dinosaur

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theliterateape · 4 years

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I Like to Watch | The Invisible Man (2020)

by Don Hall

When I was a kid, back in the seventies, I loved the Universal monster movies. My mom would buy me the plastic model kits of the Mummy, Frankenstein’s Monster, Dracula, the Creature from the Black Lagoon. I’d glue them together and paint them. For a few years, these models adorned shelves in the room I shared with my little sister. I was so taken with the Monster Movies, the first film I recall crying at was King Kong as I suppose I identified more strongly with the ape than the humans.

I’m not a huge fan of the Broadway musical Wicked yet I love the source material. The idea of taking a fairly well-known story and pivoting it from the hero’s perspective to that of the villain and seeing it played out is not only fun, it is instructive as to how false is the Good vs Evil binary.

I’m also taken with the Big Metaphor idea: take an existing tale and reframe as a metaphor for something contemporary. Dawn of the Dead — zombie apocalypse as metaphor for rampant consumerism. Frankenstein and Jurassic Park — monsters in the world created through the human need to let science make us god-like. Dracula — the vampire as metaphor for everything from xenophobia to AIDS to moral restrictions on sexuality.

The skill required to make these spins on both popular culture and metaphorical storytelling is one of balance. Too much “on the nose” and the story is lost to the political ramifications. Too little referencing of the source and point of view and it all just becomes an unmemorable waste of time.

Both Get Out and Us are great films but, for my money, Us is superior because the “lesson” is less obvious than “White People Are Evil.” Peele is brilliant and manages to find that balance for the most part but Get Out is almost impossible to see as simply a horror story as the politics gets in the way. Which, hell, might be the point but I prefer my horror films to be horror first, political intent second.

The recent Blumhouse prestige horror film is The Invisible Man and it strikes a near-perfect balance. Telling the story of the insane scientist who discovers how to render himself invisible but from the perspective of one of his victims is fun. It is also laden with the comparison to a woman desperately trying to escape a brutally abusive relationship.

The 1933 Claude Raines vehicle was all about the insane monster — a man who discovers invisibility and comes back to wreak havoc by committing “a few murders here and there.” The 2020 updates the tale to reflect the experience of a woman he has abused and, once she has escaped the domestic violence, is subjected to his invisible stalking and psychological torture while no one believes her.

Elizabeth Moss grounds this thing. Christ, the first ten minutes or so are completely silent as she escapes his house while trying to be as quiet as possible. The terror on her face, the urgency of her escape is almost physically exhausting to watch. Her performance sets the stage for the stakes of the rest of the film.

Once she is safe, she is not safe. First, because she suffers from a PTSD of sorts, terrified of random joggers on the road, spooked by things that don’t quite sound right. Helped by her sister and her sister’s policeman boyfriend (and his daughter), she has allies gently guiding her. Second, this is The Invisible Man we’re watching and knowing that means the tension never releases. You know he’s going to show up. You know that no one will believe her.

Writer/director Leigh Whannell knows how to balance the classic horror elements with the #MeToo message perfectly. Unlike, say, the rebooted Charlie’s Angels (so one note feminist that the three characters are all beautiful, brainy, and badass which leaves virtually no weakness in the heroines of the tale thus no stakes) or the Harley Quinn vehicle (where the battle cry of WOMEN UNITE! is writ large in almost every single scene), Whannell gives us a truly scary thrill and still underscores a message about the trauma domestic violence creates and the journey of simply not being believed when you know you haven’t escaped.

Monster movies almost always have a metaphor for something going on in society. Godzilla is about man flirting with atomic energy, The Mummy is about our thirst for knowledge desecrating the religious history of ancient cultures, The Wolfman covers the ground of our bestial sexual nature. I never really had a bead on The Invisible Man and I suspect that’s why I was never really into him (also there was no plastic model).

With this most recent retelling, from the lens of his victim, The Invisible Man now feels like a serious classic monster.

#I Like to Watch #The Invisible Man (2020)

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tj-45 · 6 years

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My Thoughts on Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

So this past week me and Jordan went to see the new Jurassic World, and I thought I'd share my thoughts on it. A cursory Google search will yield a rotten tomatoes score of around 50% personally I'd put it more at 65 or even 70, BUT I can hardly fault people for being so lukewarm on it. Half the people liking it makes sense because it's really only half of the film you're interested in. The film really picks up around halfway through, but up until then it's a little bit of a shitshow. Now, it wasn't ALL bad. Some highlights involve the underwater sphere escape, music, and that HEART BREAKING Brachiosaurus scene. These highlights, however, are sprinkled amid cliches, SJW pandering, and just general poor planning.

So they go in with some paramilitary dudes to extract the dinosaurs to a sanctuary, right? Well you see these guys and my first thought is, okay how long before these mercenaries betray them (JUST LIKE IN THE JURASSIC PARK SEQUEL). Well it actually didn't take long at all.

Above all though, my number one complaint of the film is the characters Computer Geek, and Feminist Paleo-Biologist. Omg I fucking HATE these characters. They are the worst. They DID have their moments, but they were so few, that you could completely remove them from the film and I wouldn't give a shit. Just to cap of how agonizingly pandering these characters are, at one point, the Sargeant character (or whatever) calls her a "Nasty Woman™". Like, they might as well stick a fucking trademark on the captions, the way the line was delivered. FUCK that cunt and her unwarranted sense of entitlement. "Oh, I'm gonna jump out of the ptv in the middle of an unsecured area inhabited by dangerous animals that are larger than a bus, and if the MEN tell me it's not safe, we'll fuck them because I'm a strong independent vagina who don't need no balls." Fuck these cliche, annoying ass characters.

Now, here's the weird part. Those two, stand as a STRIKING contrast to Owen and Claire, because the former are the worst possible depiction of men and women in a movie, while Owen and Claire are the FUCKING BEST. I hated Claire in the first film, but she's actually had some character growth and rather than dragging herself along bitching about everything, she's actually a very competent character. And while she and Owen do have occasional disagreements in the film (which you want that, shows they're individuals) you never feel like they're in competition with each other. The chemistry and cooperation on display as these two work together to solve problems is amazing, and makes them the kind of badass power couple that I've wanted to see more of in films for a long time. Their romance still feels forced, but that's really more of a nit pick at this point.

Now, that being said, all I can say about the rest of the film is it's great. The action was on point, brilliant use of plot twist near the end, and the indo-raptor gave me orgasms. There was a groan worthy reference to the first film wroth the little girl character, and the Lockwood character felt slightly shoehorned in, but again, nit picks.

In summery, fuck SJWs, I'll take Owen and Claire reverse suplexing franken-dinos any day.

#Jurassic #jurassic world #park #movie #film #review #dinosaur

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helloworlddemo1122-yahoopar-blog · 6 years

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Chris Pratt Geeks Out Over Laura Dern's Possible 'Jurassic' Franchise Return (Exclusive)

With Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom rampaging toward movie theaters soon, fans will soon get to see Jeff Goldblum reprising his iconic character, Ian Malcolm, from the original two films in the Jurassic franchise.

However, one thing fans have been clamoring for is a return of Laura Dern, who famously starred opposite Goldblum as Dr. Ellie Sattler in Jurassic Park -- and Dern herself has been very open about being down to come back.

Speaking with ET's Cameron Mathison at the premiere of Fallen Kingdom at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles on Tuesday, star Chris Pratt says he would love to see Dern return for future installments.

"Anyway she wants to come in would be amazing," Pratt marveled. "The fact that she'd be willing to is just another endorsement from one of the original cast members, which is music to our ears."

Pratt gleefully admitted that his "mind is exploding" with the potential of having the Oscar-nominated actress rejoin the franchise for a possible Jurassic World 3.

"[At] the end of this movie, you'll see, your mind will also explode uh with the potential of where this thing could go," Pratt teased.

The handsome star lamented not being able to cast Dern on the spot, joking, "Look, I don't make these calls -- but you're hired, Laura!"

ET caught up with Dern in December at the premiere of Downsizing, and the 51-year-old Golden Globe winner hinted that she would love the chance to return to the blockbuster franchise.

"[It] could be fun," she teased. "I mean, I love Ellie Sattler."

Dern praised the character, sharing, "She's a tough feminist! We need her back."

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom -- directed by J. A. Bayona and penned by Colin Trevorrow, who co-wrote and directed the first Jurassic World, alongside returning co-writer Derek Connolly -- is set to stampede into theaters on June 22.

RELATED CONTENT:

Chris Pratt on Playing With His Son and Fighting 'Man Boob Sweat' on Set of 'Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom'

Chris Pratt & Bryce Dallas Howard Recall Kids' 'Mind-Blowing' 'Jurassic World 2' Set Visit (Exclusive)

'Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom' Trailer No. 3: Mutant Dinosaurs Might Take Over the Planet?!

#_revsp:new_provider_with_logo_342 #_uuid:dd91afdd-3363-3ce7-8120-32eed109600d #_lmsid:a0VK0000001yfWcMAI

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meabhmcdonnell · 6 years

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People have dreams of reaching the moon, defeating death, achieving perfection. Those are the dreams that fuelled the community of Adrianne Finlay’s Your One & Only and led to the society of clones that now populates it. We spoke to Adrianne about her writing process, her clone society and her favourite science fiction.

Have you always wanted to be a writer?

I spent a good deal of time not knowing what I wanted to be, but I was always a big reader, and even as a child I entertained myself by writing stories. I became a professor of writing and literature, and certainly the fact that I enjoyed reading and writing had an impact on that path, but it took a while to imagine that I could actually do those things as a career.

What was the inspiration behind Your One & Only?

I stumbled on an article about the ethical implications of cloning a Neanderthal. The essay suggested that it would be morally irresponsible to do so, because the extinct Homo sapiens would have no connection to our modern world—no community, no family, no culture, no one who even looked like him.

That started me thinking. I loved the idea of a story about a character so radically out of place, so mismatched, the only one of his kind. Instead of writing a Neanderthal main character, I imagined a future where humanity had evolved into nine different models of genetically altered clones, and then those clones create the first new human in centuries. From the perspective of the clones, the main character of Jack is a sort of Neanderthal, primitive and distinct, and indeed even opposed to, the world that created him. So that article inspired me to explore the assumptions we all have about individuality, family, and community.

Did you have a character you identified with most?

On some level, I feel like I have to at least understand the perspective of, if not identify with, all of my important characters. It’s hard not to identify most with my main characters, however. I think everyone can understand on some level Jack’s feelings of isolation, and Althea-310’s inquisitiveness and compassion are my favorite aspects of her character.

Do you have any other favourite clone stories in science fiction?

There’s so much great fiction that involves clones! I love TV shows like Battlestar Gallactica and Orphan Black, and movies like The Island, Gattaca, and Jurassic Park. I’m also a fan of science fiction films from the seventies and eighties, some of which either directly invoke cloning, or explore some of the issues surrounding what makes us who we are: Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Boys from Brazil, Blade Runner, Stepford Wives.

I’m also a fan of science fiction films from the seventies and eighties, some of which either directly invoke cloning, or explore some of the issues surrounding what makes us who we are: Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Boys from Brazil, Blade Runner, Stepford Wives.

As there is only one human among the clones did you find it difficult to create an alien mindset for them?

One aspect of the community in YOUR ONE & ONLY is the contrast between the lack of humanity in the clones, and the human character of Jack. A challenge I faced when exploring the implications of their lack of humanity was in making their cruelty feel alien. As the news makes clear every day, humans are eminently capable of cruelty, so what makes the clones different? Humans have the ability to be empathetic—if they choose to foster that sense of themselves—and when we’re able to be compassionate and kind, we become our better selves. So as I moved forward, I looked for ways the clones could express not simple cruelty, but the more profound problem of their lack of ability to empathize. Creating the character of Althea-310 offered a means by which to explore the clone mentality with sympathy, while ultimately revealing the society’s weaknesses and flaws.

What is your writing process – do you plan out your plot from start to finish or do you just see where the story takes you?

The details of the plot often emerge as I write, and I don’t like to be too prescriptive in my planning. I enjoy allowing for those times when the story surprises me, and I like to leave room for that possibility. I don’t, however, go into a story without some direction. I know my premise, my characters, and the world I plan to create, and I spend time working towards important scenes that I’m excited about, even if I don’t always know how, exactly, I’ll get there.

What advice do you give to students in relation to their writing?

The first bit of advice I give is to keep going. Trust that the act of writing itself has value, allow the writing to not be any good, move forward, and finish. I emphasize that good writing is in revision, but you have to have something on the page to fix. So get it on the page. Worry about making it good later.

I emphasize that good writing is in revision, but you have to have something on the page to fix. So get it on the page. Worry about making it good later.

What are the challenges facing women in academia?

Often in academia, especially the humanities, one finds people who are a bit too self-congratulatory regarding their own consideration of gender and equality, and as a result act without thinking. There are plenty of significant challenges facing women—the fight for paid maternity leave, equal pay, and opportunities for advancement—but those more apparent inequalities can overshadow a subversive form of sexism found in our deep-seated cultural beliefs and ingrained prejudices. It’s important that even those who self-identify as feminist are consistently critical, working to challenge the subconscious biases to which we’re all susceptible.

You’re a person of many talents – where did your passion for soap making come from?

A few years ago, my mother-in-law announced that we were going to have handmade Christmas. She announced this in November, so time was limited. I started researching what I could make for everyone, but I definitely wanted it to be something useful rather than simply decorative. I found soap making, and a few great websites, and from my first batch (oatmeal, milk, and honey) I was hooked. Everyone raved about the gifts, and shortly thereafter I started selling the soap locally with my friend Rachel, because I’d gotten her hooked on the hobby as well. All our proceeds go to type one diabetes research, which her son was diagnosed with at age three.

Is there a novel about a soap-maker in your future?

Soap making is such a part of my life, it’s hard not to imagine it sneaking its way into my fiction. That might mean that I ponder certain scents I’m preoccupied by, and think about how to describe them in my writing, but also it could perhaps mean a future novel that features soap making as an integral part of the story. I guess we’ll see!

It’s important that even those who self-identify as feminist are consistently critical, working to challenge the subconscious biases to which we’re all susceptible.

Double Exposure – An Interview with Adrianne Finlay People have dreams of reaching the moon, defeating death, achieving perfection. Those are the dreams that fuelled the community of Adrianne Finlay's Your One & Only and led to the society of clones that now populates it.

#adrianne finlay #book #book interview #clones #cloning #inspiration #sci-fi romance #science fiction #soap making #Writer #writing #your one and only

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vdbstore-blog · 7 years

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New Post has been published on Vintage Designer Handbags Online | Vintage Preowned Chanel Luxury Designer Brands Bags & Accessories

New Post has been published on http://vintagedesignerhandbagsonline.com/end-the-smurfette-effect-and-my-other-style-wishes-for-2018-fashion/

End the ‘Smurfette effect’ – and my other style wishes for 2018 | Fashion

What fashions are you hoping for next year?

Alexis, by email

So many fashions, Alexis! First, I would like an end to Smurfette fashion, by which I don’t mean fashion that makes you look like a Smurfette (as far as I know, that is not a fashion, but this column heartily endorses Smurfette’s signature style of matching her shoes to her dress to her hat). Rather, it’s fashion that adheres to the Smurfette principle. This – as I’m sure you all know – is the name coined by the excellent feminist writer Katha Pollitt for the common trope of having a group of male characters and only one female character – as Pollitt put it in 1991, “a group of male buddies will be accented by a lone female, stereotypically defined”. Like, obviously, Smurfette and the Smurfs. Or the kids in Stranger Things, the adults in Seinfeld, the cast of The Princess Bride and so on. Once you know about the Smurfette principle, you realise that it is everywhere.

Smurfette fashion is when the woman dresses in conspicuously sexy or feminine clothes while the men around her wear clothes that look comfortable and warm. The Jurassic Park franchise has showcased this trend in marvellously boiled-down style – think of it as the Topshop of Smurfette fashion, in that it takes the look and reduces it to its most obvious reference points. It started in a minor key, with Laura Dern fleeing dinosaurs in a small pair of shorts – which magically seemed to disappear when she put on her raincoat – alongside Sam Neill, who never even had to take off so much as his hat. But all credit to Steven Spielberg: Dern’s legs were more than balanced out by the famous scene in which Jeff Goldblum reclines with his shirt unbuttoned, chest freshly oiled, a shot that I genuinely think propelled me into puberty (thanks, Jeff).

By the time we got to Jurassic World, however, poor Bryce Dallas Howard could only look at Dern’s shorts and sensible shoes with envy as she had to run from the raptors in a cream skirt suit and high heels, while Chris Pratt battled on in some sort of army fatigues. Running from dinosaurs in high heels: is this having it all, ladies, or what?

Kevin Hart, Dwayne Johnson, Karen Gillan and Jack Black in Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. Photograph: Frank Masi/AP

The wildly unnecessary remake of Jumanji – retitled, Guns N’ Roses-ishly, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle – features such an explicit example of Smurfette fashion that its poster should be the Vogue cover when this trend is finally given the industry coverage it deserves (it is a SCANDAL how the mainstream media has deliberately ignored it – #MSMsmurfettefashionconspiracy.) There, Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black and Kevin Hart all pose in the aforementioned jungle, into which they were presumably welcomed, wearing suitable safari outfits, while poor Karen Gillan is in a cropped top and hot pants. “Why am I wearing half a shirt and shorts in the jungle?” her character, Martha, protests, understandably. Ah, you say, so this is actually a super-clever satire on how female characters look in computer games, because Jumanji is now a computer game and not – as it was in the 1995 Robin Williams film – an inexplicable semi-ouija board. Oh wow, I love it when my feminism comes served up with a hot side order of meta!

But isn’t it, like, super convenient for the film-makers that mockery of this sexist stereotype meant the female lead had to be more than half-naked? Hot tip, Jumanji makers! Embodying the stereotype in order to satirise it is not satire – it is just embodying it. Remember that weird moment in the 90s when some women claimed that idolising porn stars was a feminist act because it was being done in a subversive way? Yeah, that didn’t make any sense then and this doesn’t make sense now. Put some clothes on your actress, Jumanji makers. Robin Williams would be ashamed of you.

Next! It would be totally super-awesome if fashion companies could get better at paying their taxes, especially Italian ones who are, it seems, remarkably lax about such things. Giorgio Armani and Prada and Bulgari havein the past five years, forked out hundreds of millions of pounds to settle various tax disputes. Meanwhile both Bulgari and Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbanna were investigated in tax cases – with the latter pair having 20-month convictions overturned in 2014. Now it’s the turn of Gucci, which is under investigation for possibly failing to pay $1.3bn in taxes. Oops! You know how it goes, you’re so busy making super-duper, absolutely fabulous, hippy-luxe maximalist fashion that you forget to pay that pesky $1bn. I have long believed that anyone who avoids paying taxes should, in compensation, go out and do what taxes pay for, up to their level of qualification. So – if they were found guilty – Gucci’s people could, for example, work as street sweepers, work in the local council listening to angry people call up to complain about various parking disputes with their neighbours, or work as waste disposal people in local hospitals. After several million years of that, their debt might just be paid off.

But really, the only fashion I’m interested in is what outfit the new US president, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris or Kirsten Gillibrand, wears to their inauguration, after President Trump and his entire administration are impeached. I haven’t worked out how any of this will happen, legally, constitutionally or practically, but I’m sure excited to see the outcome.

Post your questions to Hadley Freeman, Ask Hadley, The Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Email [email protected].

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suchagiantnerd · 7 years

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46 Books, 1 Year

In 2016 I didn’t QUITE make it to my goal of reading 50 books, but I sh*t out an adorable human instead so I don’t feel too bad. Because of the pregnancy and baby-having, I also decided to cut myself some slack and didn’t take notes after finishing each book (which I usually do), so this year’s reviews are not as detailed as usual. But if you’re interested in learning more about any of these reads, just message me and I can chat more about them!

1. The Year of Living Danishly: Uncovering the Secrets of the World’s Happiest Country / Helen Russell I am obsessed with the Danish concept of hygge (which loosely translates to ‘coziness’). I wanted to learn more about how to live a life full of hygge and other ways of increasing happiness. This is a fitting read for this time of year. January doesn’t have to be cold and depressing; it can be full of candlelight, soft blankets, comforting food, and friends and family. The message seems to be to nestle in and hibernate together!

2. Dragonfly in Amber / Diana Gabaldon The second book in the Outlander series follows Claire and Jamie as the battle of Culloden approaches. Can they stop it? Or does attempting to change history result in even worse outcomes?

3. Voyager / Diana Gabaldon I can’t say much about the third book in the Outlander series, as it will spoil some big plot twists. So I’ll just say that the sex scenes are as great as ever!

4. Six Metres of Pavement / Farzana Doctor Set in Toronto, this story follows three broken people as they slowly find community and acceptance with each other - Ismail grieves his infant daughter years after her death (which was ultimately his fault), Celia, recently widowed, deals with loneliness and feeling unwanted, and Fatima, a queer university student, deals with the fallout of coming out to her traditional family. A heartwarming read, though the plot feels a bit too contrived.

5. The Light Between Oceans / M.L. Stedman You best read this one before the movie comes out! Or is it already out and I’m that out of touch now? This story will make you want to visit all the barren, lonely lighthouses you can find. It will also make you thank god for your relatively uncomplicated life. This book is heartbreaking and features baby-stealing (with the best of intentions), WWI PTSD, and a look at life (for better or worse) in small town Australia.

6. Cinder / Marissa Meyer You thought for a second I’d forgone my first love, YA Dystopian? Nuh uh! This is the first in a series that works fairytale characters into a futuristic world full of spaceships, robots, and a violent lunar people. “Cinder” obviously pays homage to Cinderella. But instead of one glass slipper, she’s got one bionic leg and is an expert mechanic.

7. Circling the Sun / Paula McLain Based on the real-life love triangle between Beryl Markham, Karen Blixen and Denys Finch Hatton in while colonial Kenya, McLain takes us from Beryl’s “wild” childhood without a mother figure playing with her Kipsigis (a Kenyan tribe) best friend and riding horses, to her bold and sometimes disastrous adult years training horses, falling in and out of love and lust, and eventually becoming one of the first women to fly solo across the Atlantic. This is a well-written and dreamy story, but ignores most of the world outside the expat community. Is that irresponsible? I don’t know.

8. Wolf Winter / Cecilia Ekback If there’s a better “dead of winter” read, I don’t know what it is. I loved this tale taking place in 1717 in Swedish Lapland. A disparate group of settlers struggles to survive a particularly brutal winter just after one of their members turns up dead. Was it actually an animal attack? Many of the settlers believe otherwise as suspicion and cabin fever set in.

9. Behind the Beautiful Forevers / Katherine Boo This non-fiction account of a Mumbai slum reads like a novel. Journalist Katherine Boo spent months getting to know the slum’s residents, gaining insight into their hopes and dreams, the drudgery of their day-to-day existence, and the political and personal ties between them all. Their stories will break your heart.

10. Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong - and What You Really Need to Know / Emily Oster I’ve always dreaded pregnancy, mainly because of all the policing of pregnant women’s bodies. This book is a nice antidote to all of that. When Oster, a statistician, became pregnant for the first time, she gathered together all of the valid studies about caffeine and alcohol consumption, gardening, certain foods, owning cats, etc, etc, etc and and complied their results, determining what’s really harmful to a growing baby and what’s not. Have your cup of coffee in the morning, ladies. And a glass of wine now and then is just fine! But no ciggies. No ciggies at all.

11. The Heart Goes Last / Margaret Atwood Atwood’s latest novel does not disappoint. Set in a near-dystopian future, a new gated community takes the prison-as-business model one step further. Rotating every month, half of the population acts as prisoners in an actual prison, while the other half maintain the town or work as prison guards. It’s efficient, right? Less housing required, the prisoners all do work to help the town, everyone gets a salary. But it just might be too good to be true…

12. Drums of Autumn / Diana Gabaldon Once again, I can’t say much about the fourth book in the Outlander series for fear of spoilers except that Jamie and Claire are a bit older now, and there’s a new generation of sexy Scottish people to populate your daydreams.

13. Fifteen Dogs / Andre Alexis I don’t know what to say about this book other than I both loved it and hated it? This is also the book my book club has spent the most time ever talking about. Set in Toronto, it follows 15 dogs staying the night at a veterinary clinic who are suddenly blessed/cursed with human consciousness. What follows is occasionally comedic, but mostly violent and terribly sad.

14. I Just Want to Pee Alone / Some Kick Ass Mom Bloggers I should probably have waited to read this collection of true stories until after I’d had the baby. In one story, a woman describes her post-birth vagina as a sad old elephant.

15. The Damned / Andrew Pyper Pyper is great at sketching out a truly creepy character. In this story, Dan is haunted by his deceased twin sister, who happened to be a sociopath while alive. Now that she’s dead, her ability to torture him seems to have no bounds. I also really liked the book’s setting of Detroit.

16. Scarlet / Marissa Meyer The second book in the “Lunar Chronicles” series, this book focuses on a Red Riding Hood-inspired protagonist. And the love interest is pretty wolf-like. Oooh mama!

17. The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century / Steven Pinker Full disclosure: This is a grammar book. Basically you shouldn’t read this unless you write for a living / want to really improve your writing. I’m not even sure I should have read it. Some tips were great, others were too detailed for me to grasp, others I already forget.

18. Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time / Jeff Speck Though this book focuses on American cities, it applies to anywhere. If you’re an amateur urban planning nerd like me, you’ll love this book. Two fun factoids - trees increase a neighbourhood’s value and liveability A LOT and you’re more likely to suffer a heart attack in the few hours after you’ve been driving a car. Driving in a city is THAT stressful.

19. How to Be a Woman / Caitlin Moran In this non-fiction tome of memories / essays, well-known British feminist Moran takes on body image, sex, working in the music industry, pregnancy and childbirth, living in poverty, and abortion.

20. The Jade Peony / Wayson Choy This novel reads more like a series of related short stories, and follows the childhoods and teenage years of three siblings, Jook-Liang, Jung-Sum and Sek-Lung living in Vancouver’s Chinatown in the 1930s and 40s. This is a touching book, and each child deals with their own stresses and troubles from losing a beloved grandmother to realizing one’s sexuality to the difficulties of life as a child of new immigrants.

21. Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman / Lindy West Lindy West is my hero, and the author of my favourite piece of comedic writing ever, a hilarious review of Jurassic Park from beginning to end. She’s also a fiercely intelligent feminist and this is her first book. It’s about trying to make herself as small and quiet as possible, only to realize that that’s bullshit. As women, we should be as big and loud as we want.

22. I Was Told There’d Be Cake / Sloane Crosley This is a non-fiction collection of stories from Crosley’s life. Who is she? I didn’t know before and I still don’t really know, but she’s a Jewish New Yorker who is a good writer and is pretty funny. This collection is not heavy in the least - it’s just some funny and amusing anecdotes from a regular person’s life.

23. Tampa / Alissa Nutting Hooooooooo boy. What can I say about this one? Nutting tells the story of Celeste Price, a 26-year old middle school teacher who is a pedophile. And Price is relentless in her pursuit of the perfect victims, searching for boys just on the cusp of puberty. This is kind of a reverse “Lolita”. But I gather it’s way grittier (I have not read “Lolita” so I can’t say for sure). Nutting is a good writer and her style is very, shall we say, visceral? But this book is not for everyone.

24. The Widow / Fiona Barton This book felt like Barton’s attempt to get on the “Gone Girl” / “The Girl on the Train” bandwagon, and it fell short. I don’t recommend it. I also hated the main character, a simpering weakling of a woman.

25. Time Zero / Carolyn Cohagan This feels like a “The Giver” of our time. It’s also a truly feminist YA dystopian novel. In it, Cohagan has created a world (in what used to be Manhattan) run by men with a set of very harsh rules for women. In a poignant twist, all of the rules in the novel are actual rules that various women around the world today have to live under. I really believe this book should be added to the public school curriculum.

26. Battle Royale / Koushun Tatami Before “The Hunger Games”, there was “Battle Royale”. Set in a dystopian Japan, each year in a government experiment, random classes of ninth graders are sent to secluded locations and forced to kill each other until one survivor remains. To prevent runaways, each student must also wear a collar which explodes if the student tries to escape. YIKES. A cult classic, this is a sad and violent read full of interesting characters.

27. Before the Fall / Noah Hawley A private plane crashes into the Atlantic ocean, and of the 11 people on board, only two survive - a young boy and the lone outsider, an aspiring artist who’d recently befriended one of the rich passengers. This is a tight, scintillating thriller, and as the mystery of what (or who) caused the crash unfolds, we get an inside look at each of the passenger’s thoughts and backgrounds. I didn’t love the resolution, but the excellent lead-up was worth the read.

28. The Passage / Justin Cronin I reread this for the third time in advance of the release of “The City of Mirrors” (book 30), the third in this trilogy. This remains my favourite book / series of all time. It’s a dystopian/sci-fi/thriller/epic full of an amazing cast of characters and spanning over a century.

29. The Twelve / Justin Cronin I also reread the second book in “The Passage” trilogy.

30. The City of Mirrors / Justin Cronin As expected, the final book in this trilogy both thrilled me and broke my heart.

31. The Haunting of Maddy Clare / Simone St. James I just wanted a good old-fashioned book about a ghost set in the British countryside. This book was that, but was cheesier than I thought it would be. And unexpectedly involved a sexy romance sub-plot which was enjoyable and terrible at the same time.

32. The Girls / Emma Cline In the summer of 1969, bored and naive teenager Evie befriends a mysterious older girl named Suzanne, who slowly brings her into the folds of a Manson-inspired cult. The Manson-y cult leader isn’t quite as big a character as you might think, and the book, like the title, really does focus on the relationships between young girls that we can all relate to - the idolization, the obsessiveness, the jealously, the fervent love we sometimes feel for each other.

33. The Last Star / Rick Yancey I had to read the final book in “The Fifth Wave” alien trilogy, and much like the “Divergent” series, this series gets worse with each tome.

34. The Bluest Eye / Toni Morrison Penola is a young Black girl growing up in Ohio in the post-Great Depression era. Her life is shit. Daughter to an abusive father and an overtired and busy working mother, teased at school, and simply put, already beaten down by life, all Pecola wants are for her eyes to turn blue. This is a classic and an important read for these times.

35. Indian Horse / Richard Wagamese This novel tells the story of Saul, an Ojibway boy sent to a residential school after his family spends a few years trying to protect him from just such a fate. Saul’s only escape from the horrors of the school is his growing love of hockey. It turns out that he’s a gifted player, and his talent allows him a chance at a better life. All Canadians should read this book. The racism Saul experiences in the 1970s is still alive and well today all across this country.

36. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child / J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany, Jack Thorne If you’re a Potter fan, you’ve also already read this, and if you’re not, you don’t care!

37. After Birth / Elisa Albert I read this novel in preparation for motherhood. In it, we meet Ari, a first-time mother dealing with feelings of loneliness and the emotional fallout of her caesarian section. She cannot get over it, and her anger and sadness are palpable. She later befriends mother-to-be Mina, and the two develop their own little support system (or should I call it a lifeline?). This is a much needed story about pregnancy, birth, mothering, female friendship, and the importance of support from friends, family, and the medical profession.

38. Sex Object: A Memoir / Jessica Valenti In this collection of anecdotes from feminist and journalist Valenti, she tackles issues of sexism, harassment, internet trolling and your everyday, run-of-the-mill misogyny against the backdrop of her youth and young adulthood in New York. Add this to your growing feminist library (we all have one, right?)

39. Parenting Beyond Pink and Blue: How to Raise Your Kids Free of Gender Stereotypes / Christia Spears Brown, PhD The title says it all. But as you’ve probably seen, Fern wears a lot of pink. You can’t say no to hand-me-downs and gifts! I guess I’ll work to combat gender stereotypes in other ways…

40. Middlesex / Jeffrey Eugenides This is a sprawling coming-of-age story about Cal, who is intersex. When born, Cal appeared to be a girl and was raised as such. As they go through puberty, Cal’s transformation is more confusing and painful than that of most, and they start to question their identity. Eugenides also details the strange and somewhat taboo history of Cal’s family, illustrating that nothing occurs in a vacuum. We exist in the context of our families. This was a thoughtful and engaging read.

41. Everything I Never Told You / Celeste Ng This novel explores all the things we don’t tell those we are closest to - our spouses, our children, our parents, our siblings - and the fallout of these omissions. It also explores the unique challenges of a mixed-race family living in 1970s America including overt and subtle racism, feelings of not belonging, and questioning one’s own identity. On top of all this, Ng has also rolled in a gripping mystery.

42. The Japanese Lover / Isabel Allende Allende is one of my favourite authors, but this book fell flat. The dialogue felt forced and preachy, and the characters, especially the Japanese ones, were often stereotypes. A tale of illicit love and Japanese internment camps (sounds promising, right?) I would skip this one, especially if you’ve never read Allende before.

43. North American Lake Monsters / Nathan Ballingrud I was so excited to read this collection of strange and scary short stories, but it was a disappointment. Ballingrud does not take any of these stories far enough, and the endings were almost all vague and left things up in the air. I don’t consider this tactic all that artistic anymore, it just seems lazy. COMMIT TO AN ENDING, authors, COMMIT TO A DANG ENDING!

44. Cold Mountain / Charles Frazier Towards the end of the Civil War, soldier Inman has had enough. Recovering from a serious neck wound in hospital, he decides to defect and make his way home to Cold Mountain and his love, Ada. Meanwhile, back on Cold Mountain, Ada’s fallen on hard times and is in serious survival mode. As Inman makes his long way home, Frazier paints a broken and bloody countryside on the cusp of something new.

45. Mrs. Poe / Lynn Cullen This is a juicy historical fiction novel about the love triangle between Edgar Allan Poe, his wife, and his contemporary, writer Frances Osgood. Surprisingly, the delicate ingenue Mrs. Poe seems like the creepiest one of the three (whether or not this is based on fact, I don’t know). I loved the setting, the plot, and the literati cast of characters, but the style of writing was a bit fluffy. It felt as though Cullen was writing with a future movie deal in mind.

46. All My Puny Sorrows / Miriam Toews Set in Winnipeg and Toronto, this story follows a Mennonite family plagued by tragedy after tragedy. Toews explores issues of intergenerational trauma, suicide, mental health, the damaging effects of patriarchy, and how amidst all that, love still flourishes.

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